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THE BEGINNINGS 



AMERICAN NATIONALITY 



JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor. 



History is past Politics and Politics present History — Freeman. 



EIGHTH SERIES 
MI 

THE BEGINNINGS 

OF 

AMERICAN NATIONALITY 



The Constitutional Relations Between the Continental 

Congress and the Colonies and States 

from 1774 to 1789 



By ALBION W. SMALL, Ph. D. 

President of Colby University 




BALTIMORE 

Publication Aqkncy of the Johns Hopkins Univbrsitt 

Janaary and February, 1890 



L. 7, 1 d 



54 



->. 



Copyright, 1890, by N. Murray. 



JOHN MUBPHY & CO., PRINTERS, 
BALTIMORE. 



^^'^ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Page, 

Chapter I. Introduction 7 

Chapter II. The Congress of 1774. 

Section I. The Parties Represented 14 

II. The Composition of the Congress 16 

III. The Powers of the Members 18 

IV. The Organization of the Congress 22 

V. The Acts of the Congress 24 

VI. The Corresponding Acts of the Colonies 34 

VII. Conclusions 39 

Chapter III. The Congress of 1775. 

Section I. The Parties Represented 43 

II. The Powers of the Members 45 

III. The Organization of the Congress 50 

IV. The Acts of the Congress 53 

1. Individual Applications 53 

2. Advice and Aid to Colonies 71. 54 

3. Utterance of Patriotic Opinion 56 

4. Organ of Communication 57 

5. Peaceful Measures of General Utility 60 

6. OflTensive and Defensive Measures to be Urged 

on Individual Colonies 65 

7. Raising of Continental Army, and Direction 

of Military Affairs 69 

8. Creation and Administration of Revenue 70 

V. Conclusions 73 

VI. The Corresponding Acts of the Colonies 76 



The present number concludes with the introduction to Section VI. 
The next instalment of the work will continue the discussion through 
Chapters III and IV, or to the Declaration of Independence. 



THE BEGINNINGS 



OF 



AMERICAN NATIONALITY. 



CHAPTER I. 

Introduction. 



The facts of American history were very early confounded 
with the definitions and doctrines of a dogmatic political 
philosophy. Before our Constitution was three score years 
old, it had been associated with a mass of theoretical and 
fanciful folk lore, whose authenticity was more vehemently 
asserted than were the facts themselves. A body of tradition 
grew up about the origins of our nationality, and it became 
the mould in which all conclusions from documentary sources 
must be cast. This apocryphal element obscured the genuine 
portions of our history, and became the criterion by which 
events were judged, instead of remaining an hypothesis which 
the examination of evidence should justify or destroy. 

The general view of our national development which found 
its ablest political champion in Daniel Webster, discovered in 
the history of the United States an experience absolutely 
unprecedented. It S9,w a nation "born in a day." It saw, 
nevertheless, the anomalous spectacle of repeatedly threatened 
and finally attempted self-destruction, in the body thus spon- 
taneously generated. Persons who have approached the study 

7 



8 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

since the interpretation of our Constitution ceased to be a 
subject for angry dispute, are to be pardoned if they suspect 
that the point of observation from which our history presents 
such a phenomenal aspect was not fortunately chosen. It is 
not surprising that men who have been taught to trace 
between all historical causes and effects the slow procession of 
gradual advance, are suspicious of the alleged singular excep- 
tion. They cannot silence the supposition that there must 
have been process and plan, not merely catastrophe, at the 
foundation of our nationality. They see no reason why, 
from material so abundant, compared with that by means 
of which so many remote periods have been revived, it 
should not be possible to reconstruct the plan of our national 
formation. 

The men upon whom we have hitherto depended for a 
knowledge of our early constitutional history have embarrassed 
us with the abundance of their learning. Most conspicuously 
is this true of Mr. Bancroft. To depreciate his work would 
be no less uncritical than impertinent. Failure to regard him 
with grateful admiration would forcibly argue unfitness to be 
an apprentice where he is a master. Yet it may, without dis- 
respect, be observed, that he has credited his readers with 
powers of discrimination which few possess. As a conse- 
quence, while performing a service beyond praise, he has 
imposed upon students a task which the majority will scarcely 
prove competent to perform. 

It would be a labor of no mean merit to reorganize the 
material in Mr. Bancroft's last volumes, and arrange it in 
three groups, each exhibiting a distinct process of evolutiop. 
There is, in the first place, material in the volumes for a book 
on the development of individual opinion in America, upon 
political philosophy in general, and its particular application 
to the problems involved in the controversy with Great 
Britain. There is, in the second place, material for the history 
of that organization of political forces which was at length 
defined in the written Constitution of 1789. There is, finally. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 9 

material for an account of that necessary assimilation of 
thought and feeling, without which written constitutions are 
simply words, a process which began with extreme provincial- 
ism, and which was going forward, not completed, in the 
adoption of the work of the Federal Convention. So long as 
these distinct lines of development are practically identified by 
students, so long will each and all of them be misunderstood. 
It is inevitable that the opinions of Washington and Jefferson 
and Hamilton upon public policy will seem to be indexes of 
general sentiment, and that they will color our interpreta- 
tion of acts and enactments if all are presented together. If 
the significance of individual opinions is to be apprehended, 
the pei'sonal equation must be computed in every instance. 
This line of investigation can therefore be properly followed 
only by itself. If the political condition and development of 
the masses is to be exhibited, testimony of an entirely dif- 
ferent sort must be adduced. Hence this must be a separate 
sphere of research and conclusion. If, finally, institutions 
are to be described, their action, not their definition, must be 
observed. 

Failure to recognize these fundamental requirements is 
accountable for much that is misleading in attempts to 
expound our national experience. 

It seems necessary, therefore, to draw, in the first place, 
very sharp lines between these different areas of investigation. 
This study is concerned, then, not with the growth of indi- 
vidual opinion, but with the growth of institutions. It is an 
effort to select a more natural vanishing point for the perspec- 
tive of our national history. 

The question proposed at the outset is : — What teas the 
exact relation of the Coniinental Congresses to the colonies and 
states. Nearly all the fallacies in the literature of our consti- 
tutional history may be traced, wholly or in part, to assump- 
tions in answer to this question. Our constitutional history 
cannot be written with authority until the question of fact 
2 



10 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

here raised is settled by appeal to the detailed evidence on 
record.^ 

The most natural method of exhibiting the relations 
between Congress and Colonies would seem to be, then, to 
place them before the reader in exactly the relations in which 
they appear in the public records. That method has been 
adopted in the following pages. After a brief account of the 
legal character of the communities with which the history 
deals, extracts from the records are arranged to show : First, 
the character of the bodies that assumed to act for the colo- 
nies ; second, the powers which these colonial bodies gave to 
representatives in the continental body ; third, the character 
of the continental body so composed ; fourth, the acts of the 
continental body ; fflh, the corresponding acts of the colonial 
bodies. 

This method of exposition is applied first, to the period of 
the Congress of 1774; second, to that of the first session of 
the Congress of 1775; third, to that of the session Septem- 
ber, 1775 to July, 1776; fourth, to the pre-confederation 
period, July, 1776 to March, 1781; fifth, to the period of 
the Confederation. 

As hinted above, this study has proceeded upon the princi- 
ple that in the nature of the case there is and can be but one 
text-book of our constitutional history. That book is in 
many parts, but it is composed solely of the authentic records 
of public acts, with occasionally admissible marginal notes 
drawn from more private sources. In collecting and arrang- 
ing data for generalization from the public records, the expo- 
sition has gone forward as though these authorities had, up to 



' It is astonishing that, after a space of thirty years for reflection, Mr. 
George Ticknor Curtis now reprints his history of the Constitution with- 
out revision of the assertions which beg this fundamental question. In 
the second chapter he repeats the dogma that the Congress of 1775 was 
a '^national government." Until more exact analysis is applied, our early 
history must remain mythical. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 11 

the present, been nnknown/ and as though no attempts had 
ever been made to describe our national development. 

The second part will deal fi^st, with the diplomacy of the 
Association and of the Confederation, as affecting nationality. 
No attempt to enter upon an exhaustive investigation of our 
diplomatic history is contemplated for the purposes of this 
inquiry, but an answer will be sought to the questions : What 
influence upon national formation was exerted by the fact that 
the associated and afterwards the confederated states acted 
practically as one nation in negotiating with foreign powers, 
in borrowing money, in sending and receiving ambassadors, 
and in concluding treaties ? What effect of these proceedings 
can be traced in the development of a national consciousness 
and in the adoption of a national organization? Were the 
states in any way committed to nationality, as contrasted with 
alliance, by these foreign relations ? It will be shown that 
while these relations logically implied nationality, the force of 
the logic was not admitted and enacted. 

The second part will then discuss the relations between 
state and state within the Confederation. This is a necessary 
element in the view. The perspective could not have been so 
distorted if the details to be considered in this connection had 
not been unnoticed or unknown.^ 

The outcome of the study, up to 1789, is the demonstration 
that from this date two distinct questions were to be decided: 
1. What is the necessary legal interpretation of the Constitution 
on the subject of inter-state relations f 2. Much more funda- 
mental, but its importance was inadequately understood until 



^ As indeed to all intents and purposes they seem to have been to preten- 
tious commentators upon our history, who might be named. Scores of faint 
and blurred composite photographs of many distant views are in circulation, 
purporting to be accurate representations of our institutions. The false 
impressions which these have created can only be effaced by studious 
attention to the clear and precise delineation of the records themselves. 

^ Portions of the evidence to be presented have been used in a popular 
way by Mr. John Fiske, in his Critical Period of American History. 



12 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

it had passed into history — What is the actual will of the peo- 
ple on the subject of inter-state relations f The historian of the 
present generation, who studies the records independently, 
cannot fail to discover that while the logic of the Constitution 
answered the first question in one way, all the significant pub- 
lic acts of the period answered the second question in a con- 
tradictory way. The people of the United States simply 
dodged the responsibility of formulating their will upon the 
distinct subject of national sovereignty until the legislation of 
the sword began in 1861. The justification of the success of 
northern arms was not in its vindication of assertions about 
the meaning of events in 1775-89. It was in its proclama- 
tion of the completion of an historical process begun in 
1775-89. This conclusion, which the documentary evidence 
irresistibly enforces, must determine the method of treating 
our history under the Constitution.^ 

To provide against rejection without a hearing, analysis of 
the facts thus to be reviewed, and criticism of the traditions 
and conventionalities founded upon them, must protest itself 
more patriotic than the inexact and illogical dogmatism which 
has claimed for these events a meaning that fastens an artifi- 
cial construction upon our whole subsequent history. A pre- 
cise estimate of the importance of these acts, as steps leading 
to governmental organization, does not diminish, but rather 
enhances, the value of each force and factor that contributed 
to the great completion. The exegesis which finds the transi- 
tion from atomic colonial independence to organic nationality 
so easy that it is accomplished by a few resolutions, unwit- 



^I plead guilty of the large ambition to follow out this method and 
rescue our constitutional history from the misinterpretations of Von 
Hoist. The struggle of state sovereignty, in this country, for its right of 
primogeniture, and the gradual obliteration of that right through the 
development of new economic, social, and moral conditions, which at last 
violently prevailed, is a subject still obscure enough, but surely instructive 
enough to reward the labor of him who shall win recognition as its truth- 
ful historian. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 13 

tingly denies to the artificers of our Union the glory of great 
achievement. Confusion of distinctions whose discrimination 
measures and ilhistrates the length and difficulty of the pro- 
gress from localism to nationality, instead of assuring to the 
men of the Revolution the fame they deserve, tends rather to 
the conclusion that obstacles so quickly overcome, and changes 
so spontaneously effected, were but factitious and trivial after 
all, and that consequently the evolution of nationality did not 
cost steadfastness and sacrifice and devotion especially memor- 
able. If, on the other hand, nothing be interpreted into 
these acts which they did not literally contain ; if steps be not 
magnified into strides, and strides into leaps ; if foreshadow- 
ings be not confounded with actualities, and prophesies with 
fulfilments, the tremendous force of local inertia, resisting 
unification, can first be recognized and approximately esti- 
mated, and the splendid merit of converting a portion of this 
energy into national loyalty will then appear to belong not to 
a few, but to a succession of illustrious men, whose labors were 
crowned in the maturity of our nation, after a century of 
growth. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Congress of 1774. 

Section I. The Parties Represented. 

Thirteen corporations created by the laws of Great Britain, 
but located on American soil, had, for years, impatiently 
endured violations of their charters by English rulers. The 
members of these corporations were British subjects, governed 
by laws made or sanctioned in England, and claiming the 
rights of British citizens. Clauses similar to the following 
occur in the charters of these corporations. 

"All and every of the persons being our subjects, which shall 
dwell and inhabit within every or any of the said colonies . . . 
shall have and enjoy all liberties and franchises and immunities 
within any of our other dominions to all intents and purposes as 
if they had been abiding and born within this our realm of Eng- 
land." ' 

On the other hand, these corporations were as distinct and 
individual as are different railroad companies which have 
severally obtained charters and grants of land from the present 
government of the United States. The patent to Lord Balti- 
more, conferring upon him the territory of Maryland (1632), 
contains these significant words : 



^ Va. Charter of 1606. Cf. Dec. of Rights by Congress of 1774. Journals 
of Cong., I, 29. 

14 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 15 

"And further, our pleasure is . . . that the said province, 
tenants and inhabitants of the said colony or country shall not 
from henceforth be held or reputed as a member, or as part of 
the land of Virginia, or of any other colony whatsoever, now 
transported, or to be hereafter transported ; nor shall be depend- 
ing on or subject to their government in anything, from whom we 
do separate that and them. And our pleasure is, that they be 
separated, and that they be subject immediately to our crown of 
England as depending thereof forever." 

As indicated by the provisions of which this paragraph is 
an example, the one relation common to all the colonies and 
colonists, was that of dependence upon the English crown and 
amenability to British law. The colony of Massachusetts Bay 
was as distinct from the colony of Pennsylvania as it was from 
the colony of Jamaica or the kingdom of Ireland. Had 
Virginia owed her allegiance to the crown of France, and 
Maryland her allegiance to the crown of Spain, they could 
not have been more mutually exclusive corporations, in all 
that pertained to regulation of their respective aifairs. A 
British subject indeed, residing in one of these colonies, had 
the common law rights within the territory of the others. He 
had these rights, however, not as a member of another colonial 
corporation, but as a British citizen. He could exercise the 
right in the Bermudas or Barbadoes or Bengal as freely as in 
New Hampshire or New York or the Carolinas. 

The attempts to secure recognition of common interests, and 
to obtain agreement upon plans of cooperation, beginning with 
the New England Confederation of 1643,^ and ending with 
the flat failure of Franklin's scheme,^ at the Albany Conven- 
tion of 1754, prove that the colonists were far from readiness 
to merge their separate interests into those of a comprehensive 



^For Art. of Confed. and Acts of the Commissioners of the United Colo- 
nies, vid. Plymouth Colony Records, Vols. IX and X. 

^Text in Sparks's Franklin, I, 36. Vid. also Winsor, Narrative and 
Critical Hist., V, 612; VI, 65-6. 



16 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

organization. They refused to make such corporate recogni- 
tion of mutual relations, as would be involved in the creation 
of organs for the performance of inter-colonial governmental 
functions.^ 

The convention of 1765 further illustrates the growing need 
of concurrent action, but it would be difficult to demonstrate 
that, at this time, there had been progress towards willingness 
to adopt methods of concurrence which would in any way 
subject the action of single colonies to the dictation of the 
rest. The Congress of 1774 proved to be the introduction to 
inter-colonial co5peration. 

Section II. The Composition of the Congress. 

Who or what the Congress of 1774 represented, and what 
its powers were, can be decided by reference to the credentials 
of the members. We learn from these, in the first place, 
what parties of men sent the delegates. 

"Monday, September 5, 1774, a number of the delegates, 
chosen and appointed by the several colonies and provinces in 
Nortli America, to meet and hold a Congress at Philadelphia, 
assembled at the Carpenter's Hall."^ Of these, the delegates 
from New Hampshire, were chosen at a meeting " of the 
deputies" (85 in number) "appointed by the several towns." ^ 
The popular branch of the legislature appointed delegates or 
" committees," ^ in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Penusyl- 



^ Whether such organization could have been effected with the sanction 
of the home government, we need not enquire. The point is that the colo- 
nial corporations did not want such arrangement enough to take any 
effective steps towards it. That the British colonial office might have 
perfected a plan of consolidation for the benefit of the mother country is 
probable. That the colonists would have accepted it is questionable. The 
text of the English scheme appears in the New Jersey Archives, Ser. 1, 
vol. VIII, pt. II, p. 1, sq. 

2 J. of C, Ed. of 1823, Vol. I, p. 1. " 

' J. of C, I, 2. •* Mass. and Penn. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 17 

vania.^ Connecticut was represented by a delegation selected 
by the colonial committee of correspondence, acting under 
instructions from the House of Representatives.^ In New- 
York City, delegates were chosen by popular vote in seven 
wards. The* "committees of several districts" in different 
parts of the state accepted the representatives so determined 
upon as their own.^ The county of Suffolk appointed a sepa- 
rate representative, and September 17, "a delegate from the 
county of Orange, in the colony of New York, appeared at 
Congress, and produced a certificate of his election by the said 
county." * King's county also chose a delegate who appeared 
in Congress October 1.^ In New Jersey, "committees, 
appointed by the several counties,"^ chose delegates. The 
language of the Delaware instructions is obscure; but it 
appears that " in pursuance of circular letters from the speaker 
of the house," " the representatives of the freemen of the gov- 
ernment of the counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, on 
Delaware," who would have constituted the Assembly, if regu- 
larly summoned, appointed delegates to the Congress.^ In 
Maryland the selection was made " at a meeting of the com- 
mittees appointed by the several counties of the province." ^ 
Virginia proceeded in the same manner.^ In North Carolina, 
"a general meeting of deputies of the inhabitants" of the 
province took the responsibility of sending representatives.*" 
In South Carolina, " a general meeting of the inhabitants " of 
the colony, nominated, appointed, and instructed " deputies," 
and the Commons House of Assembly resolved to " recognize, 
ratify and confirm the appointment." " Georgia was not rep- 
resented. 

It is obvious that a body so constituted was entirely extra- 
legal and irregular. It could have no authority to commit 



1 J. of C, I, 2 and 4. "^ J. of C, I, 3. ^ J. of C, I, 4. 

* J. of C, I, 9. 5 J. of C, I, 15. « J. of C, I, 4. 

' J. of C, I, 5. 8 J. of C, I, 6. 9 J. of C, I, 6. 

loj.of C, I, 9. iij. of C, I, 7. 



18 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

the colonial corporations to any course of action.^ Even its 
significance as a reflector of popular opinion could only be 
approximately conjectured. 

Section III. The Powers of the Members. 

The credentials contain instructions appropriate, in nearly 
every case, to the extraordinary character of the Congress. 
The New Hampshire delegation were : 

" To devise, consult, and adopt such measures, as may have the 
most likely tendency to extricate the colonies from their present 
difficulties; to secure and perpetuate their rights, liberties, and 
privileges, and to restore that peace, harmony, and mutual confi- 
dence, which once happily subsisted between the parent country 
and her colonies." * 

The vote of the Massachusetts House reads : 

"... do resolve ; that a meeting of committees from the 
several colonies on this continent, is highly expedient and neces- 
sary, to consult upon the present state of the colonies, and the 
miseries to which they are and must be reduced, by the operation 
of certain acts of parliament respecting America, and to deliberate 
and determine upon wise and proper measures, to be by them 
recommended to all the colonies, for the recovery and establish- 
ment of their just rights and liberties, civil and religious, and the 
restoration of union and harmony between Great Britain and the 
colonies, most ardently desired by all good men. Therefore, 
resolved, that ... be ... a committee, on the part of this 
province, for the purposes aforesaid ... " ^ 

Governor Wanton, of Rhode Island, signed instructions as 
follows : 



^In Mass., Conn., Penn., and especially R. I., there was apparently clearer 
legal authorization of the conference than in the other colonies. Cf. J. of 
C, I, 2. 

''J. of C, 1,2. 3 J of Q^ 12. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 19 

" Whereas the general assembly of the colony aforesaid have 
nominated and appointed you ... to represent the people of this 
colony in General Congress of representatives from this and other 
colonies. ... I do therefore hereby authorize . . . you ... to 
meet and join with the commissioners or delegates from the other 
colonies, in consulting upon proper measures to obtain a repeal of 
the several acts of the British parliament, for levying taxes upon 
his majesty's subjects in America, without their consent, and par- 
ticularly an act lately passed, for blocking up the port of Boston, 
and upon proper measures to establish the rights and liberties of 
the colonies, upon a just and solid foundation. . . . "^ 

The Connecticut representatives were enjoined : 

" To consult and advise on proper measures for advancing the 
best good of the colonies, and such conferences, from time to time, 
to report to this house." ^ 

The New York delegates bore simply certificates of election 
as representatives of districts in the city, or counties.^ In New 
Jersey, directions were issued : 

" To represent the colony of New Jersey in the said General 
Congress," * 

The Assembly of Pennsylvania resolved : 

" That there is an absolute necessity that a congress of deputies 
from the several colonies, be held as soon as conveniently may be, 
to consult together upon the present unhappy state of the colonies, 
and to form and adopt a plan for the purposes of obtaining redress 
of American grievances, ascertaining American rights upon the 
most solid and constitutional principles, and for establishing that 
union and harmony between Great Britain and the colonies, which 
is indispensably necessary to the welfare and happiness of both." * 

The Delaware Assembly, assuming that as the governor had 
refused to summon the legislature in his other province of 



1 J. of C, I, 8. » J. of C, I, 3. =* J. of C, I, 4. 

*J. ofC, I, 5. 5J. ofC, I, 5. 



20 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

Pennsylvania, he could not be expected to act otherwise in 
Delaware, declared that : 

" The next most proper method of answering the expectations 
and desires of our constituents, and of contributing our aid to the 
general cause of America, is to appoint commissioners or deputies 
in behalf of the peojDle of this government ; to meet and act with 
those appointed by the other provinces, in General Congress: 
We do therefore . . . appoint ... to consult and advise with 
the deputies of the other colonies, and to determine upon all such 
prudent and lawful measures, as may be judged most expedient 
for the colonies immediately and unitedly to adopt, in order to 
obtain relief for an oppressed people, and the redress of our 
general grievances." ^ 

The committees appointed by the several counties of Maryland: 

" Resolved, That ... be deputies for this province, to attend 
a General Congress of deputies from the colonies, ... to effect 
one general plan of conduct, operating on the commercial connec- 
tion of the colonies with the mother country, for the relief of 
Boston, and preservation of American liberty." ^ 

The delegates appointed from the diflferent counties of Vir- 
ginia, resolved : 

" That it is the opinion of this meeting, that it will be highly 
conducive to the security and happiness of the British Empire, 
that a General Congress of deputies from all the colonies assemble 
as soon as the nature of their situations will admit, to consider of 
the most proper and effectual manner of so operating on the com- 
mercial connection of the colonies with the mother country, as to 
procure redress for the much injured province of Massachusetts 
Bay, to secure British America from the ravage and ruin of arbi- 
trary taxes, and speedily to procure the return of that harmony 
and union, so beneficial to the whole empire, and so ardently 
desired by all British America." " The meeting proceeded to the 
choice of . . . for that purpose." ^ 



> J. of C, I, 5. 2 J. of C, I, 6. 3 J, of c., I, 6. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 21 

The "general meeting of deputies of the inhabitants" of 
North Carolina, defined its purposes with more emphasis. It 
resolved : 

" That we approve of the proposal of a General Congress, to be 
held in the city of Philadelphia, ... to deliberate upon the 
present state of British America, and to take such measures as 
they may deem prudent, to effect the purpose of describing with 
certainty the rights of Americans, repairing the breach made in 
these rights, and for guarding them for the future from any such 
violations done under the sanction of public authority. 

" Resolved, That ... be deputies to attend such Congress, and 
they are hereby invested with such powers as may make any acts 
done by them, or consent given in behalf of this province, obliga- 
tory in honour upon every inhabitant hereof, who is not an alien 
to his country's good, and an apostate to the liberties of America." ^ 

The Commons House of Assembly, of South Carolina, 
being informed that during the recess of the house 

"a general meeting of the inhabitants" of the colony, appointed 
deputies "to meet the deputies of the other colonies of North 
America, in General Congress, ... to consider the acts lately 
passed, and bills depending in parliament with regard to the port 
of Boston, and colony of Massachusetts Bay, which acts and bills, 
in the precedent and consequences affect the whole continent of 
America, also the grievances under which America labors, by 
reason of the several acts of parliament that impose taxes or duties 
for raising a revenue, and lay unnecessary restraints and burdens 
on trade ; and of the statutes, parliamentary acts, and royal instruc- 
tions, which make an invidious distinction between his majesty's 
subjects in Great Britain and America, with full power and 
authority to concert, agree to, and effectually prosecute such legal 
measures, as in the opinion of the said deputies, and of the deputies so 
to be assembled, shall be most likely to obtain a repeal of the said 
acts, and a redress of those grievances : 



' J. of C, I, 9. 



22 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

" Resolved, that this house do recognize, ratify, and confirm the 
appointment of the said deputies for the purposes mentioned." ^ 

Such expressions as " prosecute such legal measures," in the 
South Carolina act ; and the language of the last paragraph of 
the North Carolina instructions, have sometimes been used in 
support of the claim that the Congress thus constituted was 
more than a consultative and advisory body. It is, therefore, 
pertinent to analyze the proceedings of the Congress, in order 
to discover its own interpretation of its powers. 

Section IV. The Organization of the Congress of 1774. 
After choice of President ^ and Secretary,^ it was voted : 

" That in determining questions in this Congress, each colony 
or province shall have one vote. The Congress not being possessed 
of, or at present able to procure proper materials for ascertaining 
the importance of each colony."* 

September 5, 1774, the formation of committees began. In 
the first place a committee, consisting of two from each of the 
colonies, was appointed : 

"To state the rights of the colonies in general, the several 
instances in which these rights are violated or infringed, and the 
means most proper to be pursued for obtaining a restoration of 
them." ^ 

A second committee was chosen, consisting of one delegate 
from each colony : 

" To examine and report the several statutes, which afiect the 
trade and manufactures of the colonies." ® 

September 27, it was resolved : 

1 J. of C, I, 7. * Peyton Randolph, of Va. 

* Charles Thomson, not a delegate. * J. of C, I, 7. 
5J. of C, I, 7, 8. ej^of C, I, 7, 8. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 23 

" That from and after the 10th day of September, 1775, the 
exportation of all merchandise and every commodity whatsoever 
to Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies, ought to cease, 
unless the grievances of America are redressed before that time." 

Whereupon it was ordered that a third committee of five 
members 

" bring in a plan for carrying into effect the non-importation, 
non-consumption, and non-exportation resolved on."^ 

October 1, a committee of five was appointed to prepare "a 
loyal address to his majesty." ^ Ou the 7th, a committee of 
three was appointed : 

" To prepare a letter to his excellency, general Gage, represent- 
ing * that the town of Boston and province of Massachusetts Bay 
are considered by all America as suffering in the common cause, 
etc.,' and entreating that the work of fortification be discontinued, 
'and that a free and safe communication be restored and con- 
tinued between the town of Boston and the country.' " ' 

October 11th, a committee of three was formed to prepare 
a " memorial to the people of British America," and " an 
address to the people of Great Britain."* 

October 21st, a committee of three was appointed to prepare 
an address : 

" To the people of Quebec, and letters to the colonies of St. 
John's, Nova Scotia, Georgia, East and West Florida, who have 
not deputies to represent them in this Congress." * 

The committees thus enumerated are all, of any consequence, 
which the Congress apj)ointed. 

It seems superfluous to construe these facts. There was 
nothing administrative or governmental about the organiza- 
tion of the body. So far, it certainly did not exceed uor 
transgress the letter of its members' instructions. 



'J. of a, I, 15. * J. of C, I, 16. 3 J of Q^ i^ 17^ 

* J. of C, I, 19. » J. of C, I, 38. 



24 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

Section V. The Acts of the Congress of 1774. 

In examining the acts of the first Congress, we are reduced 
to an analysis of resolutions and pronunciamentos. The 
various committees into which the body resolved itself received 
certain instructions from the Congress/ which need not be 
separately considered, as they were incorporated into the 
reports subsequently submitted and accepted. 

The C'Ongress further received and considered several com- 
munications. The most important of these were : First, an 
account of the 

" resolutions entered into by the delegates from the different towns 
and districts in the county of Suffolk, in the province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, on Tuesday, the 6th of September, and their address 
to his excellency, governor Gage, dated the 9th." '' 

It does not appear that any specific action was expected of 
the Congress, but the members resolved unanimously : 

" That this assembly deeply feels the suffering of their country- 
men in the Massachusetts Bay, under the operation of the late 
unjust, cruel, and oppressive acts of the British parliament — that 
they most thoroughly approve the wisdom and fortitude with 
which opposition to these wicked ministerial measures has hitherto 
been conducted, and they earnestly recommend to their brethren 
a perseverance in the same firm and temperate conduct as 
expressed in the resolutions, . . . trusting that the effect of the 
united efforts of North America in their behalf, will carry such 
conviction to the British nation of the unwise, unjust, and 
ruinous policy of the present administration, as quickly to intro- 
duce better men and wiser measures. 

" That contributions from all the colonies, for supplying the 
necessities, and alleviating the distresses of our brethren at Boston, 
ought to be continued in such manner and so long, as their occa- 
sions may require." ^ 

1 J. of C, I, 16, 17, et passim. « J. of C, I, 9. ' J. of C, I, 14. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 25 

Whatever comment is necessary, by way of interpretation 
of these acts, with reference to the relations of which we are 
in search, may be made in connection with : Second, a letter 
from the Boston committee of correspondence, reciting the 
illegal and oppressive acts of the governor, and requesting 
" the advice of the Congress." ^ In response to this letter, the 
Congress, after appointing the committee mentioned above, 
resolved : 

" That this Congress approve the opposition of the inhabitants 
of the Massachusetts Bay, to the execution of the late acts of 
parliament ; and if the same shall be attempted to be carried into 
execution by force, in such case all America ought to support them 
in their opposition." ^ 

The next day (October 10, 1774) Congress, resuming con- 
sideration of the same subject, resolved unanimously : 

" That it is the opinion of this body, that the removal of the 
people of Boston into the country, would be not only extremely 
difficult in the execution, but so important in its consequences, as 
to require the utmost deliberation before it is adopted ; but in 
case the provincial meeting of the colony should judge it abso- 
lutely necessary, it is the opinion of the Congress, that all 
America ought to contribute towards recompensing them for the 
injury they may thereby sustain, and it will be recommended 
accordingly," 

" Resolved, That the Congress recommend to the inhabitants 
of the colony of the Massachusetts Bay, to submit to a suspension 
of the administration of justice, where it cannot be procured in a 
legal and peaceable manner, under the rules of their present 
charter, and the laws of the colony founded thereon. 

" Resolved unanimously. That every person and persons whom- 
soever, who shall take, accept, or act under any commission or 
authority, in any wise derived from the act passed in the last 
session of parliament, changing the form of government, and 



ij. of C, 1,16. 

* J. of C, I, 17. The Italics are mine. 

3 



26 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

violating the charter of Massachusetts Bay, ought to be held in 
detestation and abhorrence by all good men, and considered as the 
wicked tools of that despotism, which is preparing to destroy those 
rights, which God, nature, and compact have given to America." ^ 

Surely no commentary could add to the conclusiveness of 
this language. It demonstrates that the body holding it was 
perfectly aware of its own character, as a committee of obser- 
vation and recommendation, without legislative or executive 
powers of any sort. 

On the nth of October, the letter to Gen. Gage, prepared 
by the committee, was signed by the President, " in behalf of 
the General Congress." It recites, to be sure, that " the rep- 
resentatives of his majesty's faithful subjects in all the colonies 
from Nova Scotia to Georgia," have been appointed " the 
guardians of their rights and liberties."^ But in this case, as 
almost invariably during the period, words must be interpreted 
by acts, or their import will be misunderstood. The protest 
to Gen. Gage, and the subsequent advice to the people of 
Massachusetts Bay, did not involve or imply any different 
relation of the Congress to the colonies from that which would 
exist between a committee of college students, protesting against 
alleged violation of laws of the trustees by some member of 
the faculty, and the general body of students, for whom, on 
the one hand, they spoke, and to whom they issued recom- 
mendations. Or, if a more perfect analogy be sought, a 
general convention of American railroad representatives, 
deliberating upon the rights and wrongs of their res|)ective 
corporations under United States law, and on the one hand 
protesting to Congress against the administration of the Inter- 
State Commerce Act, and on the other hand, resolving upon 
advice to their principals, would illustrate the main fact in 
the relation between this Congress and the people by which it 
was created.^ 



1 J. of C, I, 18. *'J. of C, 1, 18. 

' Of course no opinion upon the legal status of delegations, appointed as 
in 1774, is implied in this comparison. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 27 

Congress exemplified the nature of its function of guardian- 
ship again, by resolving unanimously, with reference to the 
people of Massachusetts Bay : 

" That they be advised still to conduct themselves peaceably 
towards his excellency, general Gage, and his majesty's troops, 
now stationed in the town of Boston, as far as can possibly be 
consistent with their immediate safety, and the security of the 
town, avoiding and discountenancing every violation of his 
majesty's property, or any insult to his troops, and that they 
peaceably and firmly persevere in the line they are now conduct- 
ing themselves, on the defensive." ^ 

The most important business of the Congress was the 
preparation of the various documents which were intended not 
merely as weapons of peaceful warfare, but as incitement and 
equipment in case resort should be necessary to desperate means. 

I. The first of these campaign documents was the Declai^a- 
tion of Rights and Gh'ievances.^ We must regard this compo- 
sition as the chart which the Congress drew for its own guid- 
auce. It was the platform of the assembly. It was the con- 
gressional confession of faith. It contains the claims which 
were insisted on in America and disallowed in England until 
the alternative of submission or independence alone remained.^ 



1 J. of C, 1, 19. 2 J. of C, 1, 19-22. 

* In the history of American political opinion this manifesto is a monu- 
ment, but for the purposes of the present discussion, we need to notice only 
the fourth clause: ^'Resolved, That the foundation of English liberty, and 
of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legis- 
lative council : and as the English colonies are not represented, and from 
their local and other circumstances cannot properly be represented in the 
British parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legis- 
lation in their several provincial legislatures, where the rights of repre- 
sentation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, 
subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been 
heretofore used and accustomed." 

The words in Italics soon became familiar in state constitutions and else- 
where. Their meaning, like that of other familiar words of the period, 
must be derived from political not rhetorical usage. 



28 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

II. The second measure of importance was the Act of Asso- 
ciation} The representatives of the twelve commonwealths 
signed an agreement containing a pledge to unite with the 
others to secure in each colony : 

1. Non-importation from England, or English colonies not 
in the Association. 

2. Discontinuance of the foreign slave trade. 

3. Non-consumption of East India tea, and of certain other 
imports. 

4. Non-exportation to England and colonies after Septem- 
ber 5, 1775. 

5. Regulations facilitating execution of the agreement. 

6. Provision for improving the breed of sheep, and for 
equitable sale of mutton. 

7. Encouragement of frugality and discouragement of luxury 
and extravagance. 

8. Avoidance of scarcity prices and monopoly. 

9. Prevention of evasion of this agreement by indi- 
viduals. 

10. Non-intercourse with "any colony or province in North 
America which shall not accede to, or which shall hereafter 
violate, this association," and determination to " hold them as 
unworthy of the rights of freemen, and as inimical to the 
liberties of their country." 

11. Ratification of the assertion that : " We do solemnly 
bind ourselves and our constituents, under the ties aforesaid, to 
adhere to this association till the obnoxious acts are repealed. 

The act concludes with the kind of provision which is the 
key to all acts of the Continental Congress : 

" We recommend it to the provincial conventions, and to the 
committees in the respective colonies, to establish such farther 



iJ. of C, I, 23-26. 



I he Beginnings of American Nationality. 29 

regulations as they may think proiier, for carrying into execution 
this association." ^ 

III. The third publication was an address to their " friends 
and fellow subjects " of Great Britain.^ It is a review of the 
American case, at somewhat greater length and in more direct 
and persuasive language than in the Declaration of Eights. 
Appeal is taken from " wicked ministers and evil counsellors, 
whether in or out of office," to the magnanimity and justice of 
the British nation." It might have been issued with propriety 
by any patriotic individual, or by any single colony.^ Weight 
attached to it beyond that which it would have possessed had 
it come from one of the latter sources, because it more obvi- 
ously reflected the attitude of great numbers of the colonists. 
It was in no sense the announcement of a policy which a gov- 
ernment was to force upon a people. It foreshadowed a policy 
according to which a people would presently find themselves 
obliged to extemporize a substitute for a government. 

IV. The fourth expression of opinion worthy of notice is a 
memorial to the inhabitants of the twelve colonies.* It is 



^ It may not be superfluous to repeat that this epitome of the proceedings 
of the Congress is a rehearsal of familiar facts, with especial reference to 
obscured relations. The argument is: 1. The powers of the Congress, as 
defined by the votes of the bodies granting the credentials, are those of a 
committee for consultation and advice ; 2. The acts of the Congress, which 
we are now analyzing, are conformable to these instructions; hence: 3. The 
authority of a "government" cannot be predicated of this committee. 

If it be answered that no one now claims that the Congress of 1774 was 
in any sense a governmental body ; the reply is that the same sort of reason- 
ing which makes the Congress of 1775 a "national government," (vid. 
Curtis, Chap. II), might be applied to the Congress of 1774. If, therefore, 
the facts about this earlier committee of safety be recognized, the truth 
will be more readily perceived in the later case. 

»J. of C, I, 26. 

^Substantially this was done by South Carolina, September, 1775. Am. 
Archives, Ser. IV, Vol. Ill, 201 ; also by Mass., in the Spring of the same 
year. J. of C, I, 66-7. 

* J. of. C, I, 31. It is worthy of note that Ga., because not represented 
in the Congress, was not mentioned among the colonies addressed. 



30 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

another and wonderfully temperate discussion of the course of 
the British governroent from the close of the French war. It 
announces the conclusion that : 

"It is clear, beyond a doubt, that a resolution is formed, and 
now carrying into execution, to extinguish the freedom of these 
colonies, by subjecting them to a despotic government." 

The Congress indicates, in most significant language, its 
true relation to the colonies, when it declares : 

"Our resolutions'' thereupon will be herewith communicated to 
you. But, as the situation of public affairs grows, daily, more 
alarming, and, as it may be more satisfactory, to you, to be 
informed by us, in a collective body, than in any other manner, 
of those sentiments that have been approved, upon a full and free 
discussion, by the representatives of so great a part of America, 
we esteem ourselves obliged to add this address to these resolu- 
tions." ' 

The memorial . explains the considerations which prevailed 
in favor of the recommendation of commercial rather than 
military opposition to England, and concludes as follows : 

" Your own salvation, and that of your posterity, now depends 
upon yourselves. You have already shown that you entertain a 
proper sense of the blessings you are striving to retain. Against 
the temporary inconveniences you may suffer from a stoppage of 
trade, you will weigh in the opposite balance the endless miseries 
you and your descendants must endure, from an established arbi- 
trary power. You will not forget the honor of your country, that 
must, from your behavior, take its title in the estimation of the 
world, to glory, or to shame; and you will, with the deepest 
attention, reflect, that if the peaceable mode of opposition recom- 
mended by us be broken and rendered ineffectual, as your cruel 
and haughty ministerial enemies, from a contemptuous opinion of 
your firmness, insolently predict will be the case, you must inevit- 



^ Referring to the other acts mentioned in this section. 
*J. of C, 1,32. 



The Beginnings of American Naiionality. 31 

ably be reduced to choose either a more dangerous contest, or a 
final, ruinous, and infamous submission. 

" IMotives thus cogent, arising from the emergency of your 
unhappy condition, must excite your utmost diligence and zeal, 
to give all possible strength and energy to the pacific measures 
calculated for your relief: But we think ourselves bound in duty, 
to observe to you, that the schemes agitated against these colonies 
have been so conducted as to render it prudent, that you should 
extend your views to mournful events, and be, in all respects, pre- 
pared for every contingency. Above all things, we earnestly 
intreat you, with devotion of spirit, penitence of heart, and 
amendment of life, to humble yourselves and implore the favor 
of Almighty God ; and we fervently beseech his divine goodness 
to take you into his gracious protection." ^ 

There is pathos, if not authority, in these words. The 
representatives of the colonies in Congress, from 1774 to 1783 
were, all things considered, prudent and wise enough to have 
wielded vastly more power than they ever received. They 
were not a government, but their influence upon the different 
parties to the Association was exerted with patience and dis- 
cretion which compel admiration. The weakness of the 
system by which the colonies cooperated makes more marvel- 
lous the persistency and resources of the men who, by use of 
that system, conquered success. 

V. The fifth act to be mentioned iu this connection is the 
resolution of October 22d : 

" Resolved, as the opinion of this Congress, that it will be neces- 
sary that another Congress should be held on the tenth of May 
next, unless the redress of grievances, which we have desired, be 
obtained before that time. And we recommend that the same be 
held at the city of Philadelphia, and that all the colonies in 
North America choose deputies, as soon as possible, to attend such 
Congress." ^ 



iJ. of C, I, 38. *J. of C, I, 39. 



32 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

Attention to the italicised words will prevent attribution of 
authoritative character to the resolution. 

VI. The letter to the unrepresented colonies of St. John's, etc., 
approved October 22d, was but a brief note calling attention 
to the acts of the Congress, copies of which were enclosed, and 
recommending that the measures proposed be " adopted with 
all earnestness " by the colony addressed.^ 

VII. A vote which is usually passed over in silence, in 
accounts of this Congress, deserves to be included in this list: 
viz., the resolve of October 25, as follows : 

" That this Congress, in their own names, and in behalf of 
all those whom they represent, do present their most grateful 
acknowledgments to those truly noble, honourable, and patriotic 
advocates of civil and religious liberty, who have so generously 
and powerfully, though unsuccessfully, espoused and defended the 
cause of America, both in and out of parliament." ^ 

As the Congress possessed only moral powers, this apparently 
insignificant acknowledgment of friendship and sympathy in 
England was not only a deserved tribute to valuable allies, 
but it was the nearest approach to an actual evolution in the 
political battle that the character of the Congress permitted. 

VIII. The letter to the colonial agents in England was a 
request that the authorized and recognized representatives of 
the colonial corporations, should act as media of communica- 
tion between the extraordinary and irregular body claiming to 
speak for the corporations, and the king of Great Britain, and 
the other persons to whom the Congress sent addresses. It 
appealed to the personal zeal of the agents, as it could not 
command their official service, and expressed the hope that 

" your good sense and discernment will lead you to avail your- 
selves of every assistance that may be derived from the advice and 
friendship of all great and good men who may incline to aid the 
cause of liberty and mankind." It also "begged the favor" that 

1 J. of C, I, 39. * J. of C, I, 40. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 33 

the agents would " transmit to the speakers of the several assem- 
blies the earliest information of the most authentic accounts you 
can collect, of all such conduct and designs of ministry or parlia- 
ment as it may concern America to know." ^ 

IX. The address to the inhabitants of Quebec was an olive 
branch to a people of another language and religion, between 
whom and the English colonists hardly concealed jealousies 
and suspicions existed ; ^ whose assistance would nevertheless 
be of no little consequence if the issues with the mother 
country should have to be decided by force. Although it 
seems to " talk down " to the people whose cooperation it was 
prepared to win, it is a spirited appeal to the French Catholics 
of Quebec, to resent the injuries and insults which they had 
received from the English government, and to seek reparation 
in alliance with their oppressed neighbors. It promised that 
the colonies for whom it spoke, although Protestant, would 
respect the religious convictions of the people of Quebec. It 
urged them to adopt the recommendations of the Act of Asso- 
ciation. It invited them 

" to add yourselves to us, to put your fate, whenever you suffer 
injuries which you are determined to oppose, not on the small 
influence of your single province, but on the consolidated powers 
of North America."^ 

It need hardly be remarked that all pledges and assurances 
in this document assumed the indorsement of the members of 
the twelve corporations for whom its authors spoke. That 
the indorsement would have been given is probable. That the 
Congress had any power to compel it need not be expressly 
denied. 



> J. of C, I, 40. 

^Vid. Declaration of the county of Suffolk, Art. 11. Also similar article 
in Dec. of Rights by the Congress. 
='J. of C, T, 40-45. 



34 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

X. The final important act of the Congress was the signing 
of the petition to the king} In the name and behalf of " his 
majesty's faithful subjects" of the twelve colonies, it presented 
another version of the same facts which had been so variously- 
proclaimed. It appeals from the ministers : 

" Those designing and dangerous men, who daringly interposing 
themselves between your royal person and your faithful subjects, 
. . . have at length compelled us, by the force of accumulated 
injuries, too severe to be any longer tolerable, to disturb your 
majesty's repose by our complaints." ^ 

Americans will probably never be able to account for the 
stupidity of the English king, in refusing to be moved from 
his fatal policy, in view of the matter in the complaints. It 
is quite easy, however, to understand his displeasure at the 
method and means of bringing the subject to his attention. 
To use a modern term, the Continental Congress was an 
inchoate "trust." If Franklin's Albany proposition of 1754 
had been considered dangerous by the home government, how 
much more reason to fear even this federal advisory com- 
mittee ! ^ 

Section VI. The Corresponding Acts of the Colonies. 

The same obscurity has not covered the relations between 
the Congress of 1774 and the various colonies, which prevails 
among commentators upon the character of the later Congresses. 
It will, nevertheless, be well to recall a few typical acts of the 
different colonial representative bodies, which will complete 
our outline of congressional and colonial relations for the 
period. 

Although not in the strictest sense acts representing the 
corporations, it is proper to mention the responses to the 



1 J. of C, I, 46-9. 2 J. of C, I, 48. 

*Vid. letter of Lord Dartmouth; Penna. Archives, 1st Ser., Vol. 4, 
pp. 576-7. 



The Beginnings of Ametncan Nationality. 35 

recommendations of Congress, that Massachusetts be supported 
in her opposition to the oppressive acts of parliament, and 
that contributions be made to repair losses endured in the 
struggle. 

The collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society con- 
tain the most satisfactory evidences that in each of the colonies 
there were people eager to observe and even anticipate the 
advice.^ The letters referred to are full of information for 
the investigator of the tendencies of opinion in the colonies. 
They do not show, however, that the advice of the Congress 
had any marked influence on the contributors. Not only was 
aid sent before Congress met, but it would be difficult to prove 
that any more assistance was given than would have been 
rendered had Congress never mentioned the subject. 

More directly indicative of popular sentiment, though at 
the same time confirmatory of the conclusion that the Congress 
was utterly devoid of coercive power, were the acts of popular 
gatherings, in view of the measures adopted by Congress. 

In New Hampshire a popular convention, numbering one 
hundred and forty-four members, chosen by the towns, met, 
January 25, 1775, and declared its hearty approval "of the 
proceedings of the late grand continental Congress." The 
convention exhorted the people of New Hampshire " strictly 
to adhere to the Association." ^ 

The provincial Congress of Massachusetts passed a resolve, 
December 5, 1774, approving the proceedings of Congress, 
and ordering a copy of the resolution to be sent to all the 
towns and districts.^ Many of the inhabitants immediately 
signed a pledge to abide by the Association. 

The Connecticut assembly unanimously approved the pro- 
ceedings of the Congress, and ordered the towns to strictly 
observe the Association. 

1 Mass. Hist. Coll., Ser. IV, Vol. IV. 

' N. H, Prov. Papers, Vol. VII, 443. The proceedings of several towns 
and counties appear, 444-5 1 . 

3 Am. Archives, Ser. IV, Vol. I, 997, and J. of C, I, 50. 



36 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

A special meeting of the Rhode Island assembly approved 
the proceedings of the Congress, December 8, 1774.^ 

In the New York Assembly the motion " to take into con- 
sideration the proceedings of the Continental Congress " was 
lost, and the empire state of the future stood with Georgia 
alone in a non-committal, and, it was feared, hostile attitude 
towards the measures recommended for relieving America from 
oppression.^ The temper of New York was so doubtful that 
inquiry was set on foot in Virginia, March 24, 1775, as to 
whether the former colony had forsaken the colonial cause. 
The same question was agitated in Maryland and other 
colonies.^ 

The action of New Jersey, like that of nearly all the colo- 
nies, was at first fragmentary ; but after various local ratifica- 
tions,^ the New Jersey delegates to the Continental Congress 
laid the proceedings of the continental body before the colonial 
assembly, October 24; and the house unanimously voted to 
approve the same, " such as are of the people called Quakers 
excepting only to such parts as . . . may have a tendency to 
force." ^ The provincial Congress of New Jersey resolved 
unanimously. May 26, 1775, to "earnestly recommend to the 



IE. I. Col. Eecords, VII, 263. 

®Am. Arch., Ser. IV, Vol. I, 1188-90. For resolves of counties, vid. 
same, passim. 

3 Am. Arch., Ser. IV, Vol. II, 1, 168, 379, 387, 389, 448. "New York 
was the pivot of the policy of ministers. Like North Carolina and Georgia, 
it was excepted from restraints imposed on the trade and fisheries of all the 
rest. The defection of its assembly from the acts of the general Congress 
was accepted as proof that it would adhere to the king ; and the British 
generals, who were on the point of sailing for America, were disputing for 
the command at that place. . . . All believed that it had been won over 
to the royal cause, and that the other provinces could easily be detached, 
one by one, from the union, so that it would be a light task to subdue 
Massachusetts." Bancroft, IV, 149. 

*Am. Arch., IV, I, 1028, 1051. N. J. Arch., Ser. I., Vol. X, 530. .4m. 
Arch., IV, I, 1084, 1102, 1124. 

5Am. Arch., IV, I, 1124, 1126, and letter of Gov. Franklin, N. J. Arch., 
1, 10, 575. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 37 

good people of this province, that they do most religiously 
adhere to the said resolution." ^ 

The Pennsylvania Assembly approved the proceedings of 
the Congress, December 10, and recommended the good peo- 
ple to observe them inviolate.^ The provincial convention 
confirmed this action the following January by voting unani- 
mously : 

" That this convention most heartily approve of the conduct 
and proceedings of the Continental Congress ; that we will faith- 
fully endeavor to carry into execution the measures of the Asso- 
ciation entered into and recommended by them, and that the 
members of that very respectable body merit our warmest thanks 
by their great and disinterested labors for the preservation of the 
rights and liberties of the British colonies." ^ 

In Delaware, the Assembly voted, March 15, 1775, "to 
approve of the proceedings of the late Congress." * 

The counties of Maryland first chose committees " to carry 
into execution the Association agreed on by the American 
Continental Congress." Then a provincial meeting of depu- 
ties from the several counties, " read, considered, and unani- 
mously approved " the proceedings of the Continental Congress 
(December 8-12). The convention further resolved : 

" That every member of this convention will, and every person 
in the province ought, strictly and inviolably observe and carry 
into execution the Association agreed on by the said Continental 
Congress." ^ 

"A convention of delegates for the counties and corpora- 
tions" of Virginia met at Richmond, March 20, 1775, after 
many local ratifications had been voted, and resolved unani- 
mously : 



»Am. Arch., IV, II, 689. *Am. Arch., IV, I, 1023. 

='Atn. Arch., IV, I, 1170. *Am. Arch., IV, II, 126. 

5Am. Arch., IV, I, 1031. 



38 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

" That this convention doth entirely and cordially approve of 
the proceedings of the American Continental Congress." ^ 

The House of Burgesses, June 5, 1775, adopted the follow- 
ing: 

" Resolved, That this house doth entirely and cordially approve 
the proceedings and resolutions of the American Continental Con- 
gress, and that they consider this whole continent as under the 
highest obligations to that very respectable* body, for the wisdom 
of their councils, and their unremitted endeavors to maintain and 
preserve inviolate the just rights and liberties of his majesty's 
dutiful and loyal subjects in America." ^ 

The Assembly of North Carolina, April 7, 1775, passed the 
following resolve : 

" That the house do highly approve of the proceedings of the 
Continental Congress, lately held at Philadelphia, and that they 
are determined, as members of the community in general, that 
they will strictly adhere to the said resolutions, and will use what 
influence they have to induce the same observance in every indi- 
vidual in this province." ^ 

A provincial assembly had previously (August, 1774) 
promised to support the action of the Congress, and to have 
no further dealings with towns or individuals who declined to 
take similar action.* 

After the vote of April 7, Governor Martin dissolved the 
Assembly (April 8, 1775).^ At the same time and place a 
provincial convention was in session, and it voted (April 5) its 
approval of the act of association, and recommended to its 
"constituents" to adhere firmly to the same.^ The provincial 



»Am. Arch., IV, II, 167. ^^m. Arch., IV, II, 1192, 1221. 
3 J. of C, I, 54, and Am, Arch., IV, II, 265. 
*Am. Arch., IV, I, 735. *Am. Arch., IV, II, 266. 
«Am. Arch., IV, II, 265 and 268. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 39 

Congress, which met August 21, 1775, ratified or repeated the 
approval/ 

Deputies from every parish and district in South Carolina 
met (January 11, 1775) and voted "that this Congress do 
approve the American Association." ^ 

Section VII. Conclusions with Reference to Traditional Falla- 
cies about the Congress of 1774. 

Comments upon typical expressions of opinion will suffi- 
ciently summarize the conclusions to be drawn from the facts 
thus far considered. 

"TAe signature of the Association by the members of Congress 
may be considered as the commencement of the Amer-ican Union." ^ 

'* The Association was virtually law, bearing on the individual. 
. . . the first enactment, substantially, of a general law by 
America." ^ 

"That memorable league of the continent in 1774, which first 
expressed the sovereign will of a free nation in America." ^ 

If the words " union," " law," " sovereign," " nation," had 
not subsequently so often been forced on the rack of sophistry, 
to utter false evidence in justification of a theory, the expres- 
sions quoted might pass as natural and innocent hyperbole. 
They were not used hyperbolically by the school of interpreta- 
tion which prevailed until the close of the civil war, and which 
still holds its ground in the literature of our constitutional 
history. They were literal and exact technicalities, in conclu- 
sions, if not in premises. Composed into political creeds, 
these terms have been the means of exalting arbitrary and 

^Am. Arch., IV. Ill, 186. The Mecklenburg Declaration is not referred 
to in this discussion, for reasons stated below. The last word on the subject 
has been well said in the Magazine of American History, for March, 1SS9, by 
President James C. Welling, LL. D. 

»Arn. Arch., IV, 1, 1110-12. ^'Hildreth, Hi, 46. 

* Frothingham, Rise of the Republic, 373. 

* President John Adams; Benton's Abridgment, II, 404. 



40 The Beginnings of American NoMonality. 

unnatural hypotheses to the rank of fundamental truth. With 
the endorsement of eminent names, they became the axioms of 
a great political party, and the justification of a persistent, 
and at length triumphant, political policy. Time will show 
that the policy had more substantial justification than the 
defective historical reasoning which supported it. Since the 
end of a long historical process has been happily reached, it 
is possible to examine calmly the views which contributed to 
the result. Patriotic fictions are no longer political necessi- 
ties. We shall not undermine or undervalue our present 
nationality by showing that the philosophy which assisted in 
its establishment was built on a misconception of history. 

The term " union," then, can only by the most liberal 
accommodation be used in connection with the agitations of 
1774. There were common grievances. There was prospect 
of remedy only in combination of the colonies for mutual 
counsel and supj)ort. There was common indignation against 
the mother country, Avith almost universal hope that reconcilia- 
tion, not separation, would result. There was common deter- 
mination to insist upon constitutional rights, and to grant moral 
and material aid to the colony or colonies that might make 
test cases with the home government. There was common 
recognition of the necessity of coordinating eflfort under leader- 
ship competent to survey the whole situation and point out 
suitable lines of action. There was common willingness to 
adopt the advice of a central committee of observation. It 
will be the aim of a later portion of this work to show that 
all this, instead of being a matter of course, was evidence of 
magnanimity altogether admirable. Concert only to this 
extent was, in some respects, more difficult than it would be 
to-day for all the republics of the Western Hemisphere to 
form a commercial alliance. Concert to a greater extent can- 
not be created by theorizing after the event. To be proved, it 
must be discovered. The records contain nothing beyond the 
facts already characterized. To use the term " union," then, 
with its present associations, is to introduce an inexcusable 
historical solecism. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 41 

Of the word " law," similar assertions are necessary. There 
was no law, in any colony, but the constitution and laws of 
England, the special colonial charter, and the enactments of 
the legislative bodies which the charter authorized. The 
action of towns and counties upon the recommendations of the 
Congress, manifests the utmost uncertainty about the jurisdic- 
tion even of the local officers, and the sanction of the custom- 
ary laws.^ 

It is a deliberate distortion of the instructions, the language 
and the acts of the Congress, and of the proceedings of the 



^The relations of the local units to the earlier provincial assemblies 
cannot be discussed within the limits of this work. The subject deserves 
careful investigation in each State. Whether the relations which appear 
in the course of the year 1775, to be exhibited in the fifth section of Chapter 
III, are essentially new, or merely manifestations of what had previously 
been latent, I have purposely refrained from inquiring, because the question 
calls for thirteen distinct constitutional studies. The following citations 
simply fortify the statement in the text, without reference to further con- 
clusions. 

In case of N. H., Am. Arch., IV, I, 1105, 1229. The action of eastern 
Mass. need not be referred to specifically, as it is the substance of the 
Revolution thus far. In R. I., Am. Arch., IV, I, 1049. In Conn, same, 
788, 827, 1038, 1075, 1215, 1202, 1236. In N. Y., same, 1027, 1035, 1068, 
1091, 1100, 1164, 1183, 1191, 1201, 1230. In N. J., same, 1012, 1028, 1051, 
1084, 1102, 1106, 1163. In Penn., same, 1052, 1144. In Va., same, 1008, 
1022, 1026, 1031, and II, 281, 299, 372. In N. C. the resolves of the Com- 
mittee of Mecklenburgh Co. (May 31, 1775, not the alleged declaration of 
the 20th), though belonging in the next period, deserve the most careful 
attention. Am. Arch., IV, II, 855. The following clauses are in place here: 

"That all commissions, civil and military, heretofore granted by the 
crown, to be exercised in these colonies, are null and void, and the constitu- 
tion of each particular colony wholly suspended. 

"That the Provincial Congress of each province, under the direction of 
the great Continental Congress, is invested with all legislative and execu- 
tive powers within their respective provinces, and that no other legislative or 
executive power does, or can exist, at this time, in any of these colonies. 

"As all former laws are now suspended in this province, and the Congress 
have not provided others, we judge it necessary for the better preservation 
of good order, to form certain rules and regulations for the internal govern- 
ment of this county, until laws shall be provided for us by the Congress " 
(z. e., the provincial Congress, as is evident from the context). 

4 



42 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

organizations that followed its advice, to represent it as, in any 
sense, a law-making body. Metaphor which can be so directly 
traced into fallacy deserves no toleration. 

To admit the terms " sovereign," and " nation," into a 
description of American conditions at this stage, is to abandon 
investigation and classification, and to deliberately beg the 
issue. For the moment, government, even within the colo- 
nies, was partially paralyzed. It was doubtful who might 
command and who must obey. There is not a trace in any 
popular or official act of the time that can be rationally 
expounded as evidence of a claim, on the part of the Conti- 
nental Congress, to power of inter-colonial control. Persons 
in South Carolina denounced Georgia, to be sure,^ and there 
was talk of forcing that colony into participation with the rest. 
The argument was supposed expediency, justifying extraordi- 
nary action, not the assertion of any general principle subordi- 
nating the will of one colony to the command of all. The 
formation of a Continental Congress was the beginning of 
inter-colonial deliberation which broadened the horizon of the 
people, which emphasized the reasons for unity, which brought 
to popular attention the increasing number and importance of 
common interests, which created a continental opinion upon 
subjects of the most obvious common concern. The function 
of the first Continental Congress was not to express a " sover- 
eign will," but to assist in the development of a common con- 
sciousness, so that there would, by and by, be a sovereign will 
to express. By creating this continental committee, the widely 
separated colonies became simply colonies testing the actuality 
and potency of their common ideas. They were no more a 
nation than twelve neighbors, meeting for discussion of a pos- 
sible business venture, would be a partnership. 



lAm. Archives, IV, I, 1163. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Congress op 1775.^ 
Section I. The Parties Repi'esented. 

For the sake of clearness, although it involves repetition of 
reference and statement, the same lines of inquiry are here to 
be followed which have been observed in the preceding chap- 
ter. The people have, in almost every colony, committed 
themselves to revolution. They do not seem to realize that 
in discarding their charter governments they have decreed 
anarchy until they resort to the exercise of fundamental right 
and enact order. Wherever the charter government was no 
longer the de facto government ; wherever the functions of 
government were performed under other sanction than that of 
the Crown of England, revolution was an accomplished fact. 
It required some time to teach the members of each colonial 
corporation this truth. Meanwhile the following organizations 
and bodies chose members of another continental committee, 
the character of which we shall discover by the same kind of 
examination as before. 

In New Hampshire, "a convention of deputies appointed 
by the several towns in the province," met at Exeter, January 
25, 1775, and chose two delegates.^ 



^Only the first session of this Congress, viz., from May 10 to August 1, 
will be treated in this chapter. Although in the Spring of 1776 a part of 
the delegates acted under new credentials, which will be noticed in the 
proper place, it is more convenient to group the facts of the second session 
of 1776 with those of the next year, including the early part of July. 

•J. of C, I, 50. 

43 



44 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

In Massachusetts Bay, the Provincial Congress chose five 
representatives, December 5, 1774.^ 

In Rhode Island, the General Assembly chose two delegates, 
May 7, 1775.^ 

In Connecticut, the House of Representatives appointed 
five delegates, November 3, 1774.' 

In New York, " a provincial convention, formed of deputies 
from the city and county of New York, the city and county 
of Albany, and the counties of Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, 
Westchester, King's, and Suifolk," with four representatives 
of certain free-holders of Queen's county, met, April 22, 1775, 
and appointed twelve delegates.* 

In New Jersey, five delegates were chosen by the Assembly, 
January 24, 1775.^ 

In Pennsylvania, the Assembly appointed six deputies, 
December 15, 1774. Three others were added May 6, 1775.^ 

In Delaware, the Assembly chose three representatives, 
March 16, 1775.^ 

In Maryland, "a meeting of the deputies, appointed by the 
several counties of the province," chose, December 8, 1774, 
seven delegates, with liberty to " any three or more of them " 
to represent the colony.^ 

In Virginia, " a convention of delegates for the counties and 
corporations in the colony," elected seven delegates, March 20, 
1775.^ 

In North Carolina, " a general meeting of delegates of the 
inhabitants of the province, in convention," April 5, 1775, 
appointed three delegates.^" 

The Assembly, two days later, approved the choice of the 
convention." 



» J. of C, I, 51. * J. of C, I, 70. ' J. of C, I, 51. 

* J. of C, I, 51. One half of these were evidently alternates. 

^ J. of C, I, 52. « J. of C, I, 52. ^ J, of a, I, 52. 

8 J. of C, I, 53. » J. of C, I, 53. 10 J. of C, I, 53. 
"J. of C, I, 54. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 45 

In South Carolina, the Commons House of Assembly- 
appointed five deputies, February 3, 1775.^ 

It would be foreign to our purpose to enter upon the ques- 
tion of the relation of these various delegations to the members 
of the colonial corporations for whom they were supposed to 
act.^ Sufficient that revolution was strong enough to support 
these delegates, in each case, and to give them the authority of 
responsible agents of responsible principals. 

Section II. The Powers of the Members. 

Variations, more or less striking in form, from the creden- 
tials of 1774, show, in the first place, that the parties sending 
representatives had more clearly defined purposes than before ; 
but, in the second place, that they had not changed their views 
of the nature of the central committee, which was to further 
define their purposes and devise corresponding plans. 

The New Hampshire delegates had authority as follows : 

" To represent this province in the Continental Congress . . . 
and that they and each of them, in the absence of the other, have 
full and ample power, in behalf of this province, to consent and 
come to all measures, which said Congress shall deem necessary, 
to obtain redress of American grievances." * 

The Massachusetts Bay delegation was 

" appointed and authorized to represent this colony, on the tenth 
of May next, or sooner if necessary, at the American Congress, 
. . . with full power, with the delegates from the other American 
colonies, to consent, agree upon, direct, and order such further 



^J. of C, I, 54. By a record on the same page, it appears that the 
"Provincial Congress of South Carolina" had previously "appointed and 
authorized " the same representatives. 

• For illustration of the legal view of the question, vid. remarks of Gov. 
Campbell of S. C. Am. Arch., IV, II, 1044, 1618 ; also pp. 7, 236, 253-4, 
273, 1547. 

»J. of C, I, 50. 



46 Ihe Beginnings of American Nationality, 

measures as shall to them appear to be best calculated for the 
recovery and establishment of American rights and liberties, and 
for restoring harmony between Great Britain and the colonies." ^ 

The Rhode Island representatives were instructed : 

" To represent the people of this colony in a general Congress 
of representatives, from this and the other colonies, . . . there, in 
behalf of this colony, to meet and join with the commissioners or 
delegates from the other colonies, in consulting upon proper 
measures to obtain a repeal of the several acts of the British 
parliament, for levying taxes upon his majesty's subjects in 
America, without their consent ; and upon proper measures to 
establish the rights aud liberties of the colonies upon a just and 
solid foundation, agreeable to the instructions given you by the 
general assembly." ^ 

The Connecticut delegates were : 

" Authorized and empowered to attend said Congress, in behalf 
of this colony, to join, consult, and advise with the delegates of 
the other colonies in British America, on proper measures for 
advancing the best good of the colonies."* 

The New York delegates held commission : 

"To represent this colony at such Congress, with full power 
... to meet the delegates from the other colonies, and to concert 
and determine upon such measures as shall be judged most effec- 
tual for the preservation and reestablishment of American rights 
and privileges, and for the restoration of harmony between Great 
Britain and the colonies." * 

The New Jersey delegation was appointed : 



" To attend the Continental Congress of the colonies, . . . and 
report their proceedings to the next session of general assembly."* 



1 J. of C, I, 51 . » J. of C, I, 70. » J. of C, I, 51. 

* J. of C, I, 52. 5j, of C, I, 52. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 47 

The Pennsylvania representatives were : 

"Appointed deputies on the part of this province to attend the 
general Congress, . . . and that they or any four of them do 
meet the said Congress accordingly, unless the present grievances 
of the American colonies shall, before that time, be redressed." ^ 

The credentials of the Delaware delegation contained authori- 
zation : 

" To represent this government at the American Congress, . . . 
with full power to them or any two of them, together with the 
delegates from the other American colonies, to concert and agree 
upon such further measures as shall appear to them best calculated 
for the accommodation of the unhappy differences between Great 
Britain and the colonies, on a constitutional foundation, which the 
house most ardently wish for, and that they report their proceed- 
ings to the next sessions of general assembly." '^ 

To the Maryland delegates, authority was given : 

" To represent this province in the next Continental Congress ; 
. . . and that they, or any three or more of them, have full and 
ample power to consent and agree to all measures, which such 
Congress shall deem necessary and effectual to obtain a redress of 
American grievances, and this province bind themselves to execute, 
to the utmost of their power, all resolutions which the said Con- 
gress may adopt. And further, if the said Congress shall think 
necessary to adjourn, we do authorize our said delegates, to repre- 
sent and act for this province, in any one Congress, to be held by 
virtue of such adjournment."^ 

The Virginia credentials simply certified that the persons 
named in them were chosen : 

" To represent this colony in general Congress, to be held at the 
city of Philadelphia on the tenth day of May next." * 



1 J. of C, I, 52. « J. of C, I, 52. » J. of C, I, 53. 

*J. of C, I, 53. 



48 J%e Beginnings of American Nationality. 

The North Carolina representatives presented at Philadel- 
phia certificates that they were : 

*' Invested with such powers as may make any acts done by 
them, or any of them, or consent given in behalf of this province, 
obligatory, in honor, upon every inhabitant thereof." ^ 

The credentials given by the South Carolina Commons 
House of Assembly, appointed : 

"... deputies, for and in behalf of this colony, to meet the 
deputies appointed, or to be appointed, on the part and in behalf 
of the other colonies, . . . with full power and authority to con- 
cert, agree to, and effectually prosecute such measures as, in the 
opinion of the said deputies, and the deputies to be assembled, 
shall be most likely to obtain a redress of American grievances." * 

The credentials of the Provincial Congress to the same 
individuals read : 

"... appointed and authorized to represent this colony, . . . 
at the American Congress, . . . with full power to concert, agree 
upon, direct, and order such further measures as, in the opinion 
of the said deputies, and the delegates of the other American 
colonies to be assembled, shall appear to be necessary for the 
recovery and establishment of American rights and liberties, and 
for restoring harmony between Great Britain and her colonies." ^ 

Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Caro- 
lina use, in these credentials, expressions which, taken by 
themselves, might be understood to delegate more power than 
the Congress ever exercised. On the other hand, the instruc- 
tions of Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, neither 
express nor imply any definite purpose to be guided by the 



^ J. of C, I, 53. In this connection it is worthy of note that the Provin- 
cial Congress of N. C. voted credentials, September 2, 1775, for representa- 
tives to the Congress of September 5, or later, in which, after the words "in 
behalf of this province," the clause is inserted, "not inconsistent with such 
instructions as may be given by this Congress." Am. Arch., IV, III, 195. 

* J. of C, I, 54. » J. of C, I, 54. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 49 

decisions of the Congress. Taken as a whole, the credentials 
seem to create a body of counsellors, whose deliberations were 
likely to be so wise that the results would be accepted by the 
colonies in general as guides of their conduct. If Massachu- 
setts and South Carolina intended to obey the orders of the 
Congress, they were certainly alone in expressing such inten- 
tions. If Maryland really meant to pledge compliance with 
all the recommendations of the Congress, there is certainly 
food for reflection in the fact that Maryland was the last 
colony of all to ratify the Articles of Confederation, and that 
the other states were on the point of forming a confederation 
without her, when she gave her consent to the proposal of 
Congress, more than three years after it was made, and 
nearly two years after all the other states had voted to accept 
the articles.^ 

According to the canons of interpretation observed in the 
case of the first Congress, it is necessary to subject these cre- 
dentials to comparison with the acts of the body which the 
accredited persons composed. It is certain that the powers 
voted and attested by the documents here cited, received no 
increments from the journey to Philadelphia. The language 
of the credentials meant no more when read in Congress than 
when voted in the several colonies. The body which organ- 
ized in Philadelphia plainly had no powers over and above 
the sum of the powers authorized in the twelve sets of instruc- 



' J. of C, II, 610-18, III, 135-6, 201, 280, 281, 283, 576, 592. In the 
proper place it will be shown that Maryland deserved the gratitude of 
Americans for stoutly maintaining her position in respect to Western lands. 
The above allusion has simply this bearing : Argument from the language 
of tlie Maryland credentials, that henceforth Maryland was subject to the 
determinations of the Continental Congress, is estopped by the recorded and 
famous fact that Maryland was most conspicuously independent of such 
determinations. This is but another illustration of the principle contended 
for throughout this work, viz.: the character of institutions, and the nature 
of relations must be discovered by examination of the institutions and rela- 
tions themselves, not merely of the language which occasioned or recog- 
nized their existence. 



50 The Beginnings of Amet'ican Nationality. 

tioDs. Adding together twelve authorizations to "consult and 
advise," could not make power to command. The Congress 
may use its position in one of three ways : it may, first, sim- 
ply debate, reach expressions of the opinion of the majority, 
transmit the same to the colonies, and await their action ; it 
may, second, resolve upon active measures, and take the first 
steps in carrying them into execution, depending upon the 
colonies to endorse its proceedings; it may, third, assume 
governmental control of the people of the colonies, and attempt 
to establish the prerogative of forcible coercion of the constitu- 
encies represented. 

The first form of procedure would be in accordance with the 
most restricted interpretation that could possibly be placed 
upon the instructions ; the second course would exceed the 
letter of some of the instructions, but it might fairly be held 
to correspond with the apparent intent of the greater number, 
and to be in violation of no express or certainly implied 
restriction of any ; the third possible line of conduct would 
have only the single word " order," in the Massachusetts Bay 
and South Carolina resolves, as explicit authorization. 

If the first possibility were found to be the actual course of 
Congress, that body would evidently be merely a committee 
of advisers, and nothing more. If the second possibility be 
found realized in congressional acts, the body is then a commit- 
tee, not only of consultation, but of leadership. If the third 
possibility be the historical reality, the body which acted for the 
colonies was a board of government, and the twelve co5perating 
corporations were a commonwealth under central control, instead 
of twelve self-determining and self-governing communities. 

We have now to examine the records to discover which of 
the three hypothetical possibilities was actualized. 

Section III. The Organization of the Congress of 1775. 

May 10, 1775, Peyton Randolph was unanimously chosen 
president, and Charles Thomson was, also by a unanimous 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 51 

vote, appointed secretary. A door-keeper and a messenger 
were, at the same time, selected, and it was agreed to invite 
one of the city clergymen to act as temporary chaplain." ^ 

May 13, Lyman Hall presented himself with credentials 
from the parish of St. John's, Georgia, and requested admis- 
sion to the Congress.^ He was admitted as a delegate from 
the parish of St. John's, " subject to such regulations as the 
Congress shall determine, relative to his voting."^ 

The first committee of which mention is made in the Jour- 
nals, was formed May 15, "to consider what posts are necessary 
to be occupied in the colony of New York," and "to report as 
speedily as possible." * Congress was practically, thus far, in 
continual committee of the whole, " to take into consideration 
the state of America." ^ The differentiation of functions in 
committees can hardly be said to have begun earlier than June 
14th.^ Besides the committee mentioned above, another of 
three members, was appointed May 26th, to prepare and bring 
in a letter to the people of Canada ; ^ another, May 27th, " to 
consider on ways and means to supply these colonies with 
ammunition and military stores;® another, May 29th, "to get 
the letter " (to Canada) " translated into the French language, 
. . . printed, . . . and dispersed among the inhabitants there ;" ® 
another " to consider the best means of establishing post for 
conveying letters and intelligence through this continent;"^" 
and on June 3d, six committees were formed, for the following 
purposes : 

(a) to consider the letter from the convention of Massachu- 
setts, dated the 16th May, "and report what, in their opinion, 
is the proper advice to be given to that convention ; " 



•J. of C, I, 50. 

•His papers explain the situation in Ga. J. of C, I, 68. 

» J. of C, I, 67. * J. of C, I, 70. 

6 J. of C, I, 67, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83. 

® J. of C, I, 83. It might be placed much later. 

T J. of C, I, 74. 8 J of c_^ i^ 74^ 9 J of Q^ i^ 76. 

loj. of C, 1,76. 



52 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

(6) " to draught a petition to the king ; " 
(c) "to prepare an address to the inhabitants of Great 
Britain ; " 

{d) " to prepare an address to the people of Ireland ; " 
(e) "to bring in the draught of a letter to the inhabitants of 
Jamaica ; " 

(/) " to bring in an estimate of the money to be raised." ^ 
June 8, a committee was instructed to examine the papers 
of one Skene, a prisoner in the custody of the Philadelphia 
troops, and reported to be " a dangerous partizan of adminis- 
tration," with "authority to raise a regiment in America." 
It was voted : 

" That the said committee be upon honor to conceal whatever 
of a private nature, may come to their knowledge by such exami- 
nation, and that they communicate, to this Congress, what they 
shall discover, relative to the present dispute, between Great 
Britain and America."^ 

In addition to these committees, one was formed June 7, to 
draft a " resolution for a fast ; " ^ another, June 10, to devise 
ways and means to introduce the manufacture of salt-petre in 
these colonies;"^ another, June 14, "to prepare rules and 
regulations for the government of the army;"® another, June 
16, "to draught a commission and instructions for the gen- 
eral ; " ® another, on the same day, " to report what steps, in 
their opinion, are necessary to be taken for securing and pre- 
serving the friendship of the Indian nations;"^ another, June 
19, "to prepare the form of a commission for the major- 
generals, also for the brigadier-generals, and other officers in 
the army ; " ^ another, June 23, to draw up a declaration, to 
be published by General Washington, upon his arrival at the 
camp before Boston ; ^ another, the same day, " to get proper 



1 J. of C, I, 79. 2 j_ of Q^ i^ 80. 3 j_ of c_^ i^ 79_8i 

*J. of C, I, 81. » J. of C, I, 83. «J. of C, I, 84. 

"■3. of C, I, 84. 8 j^ of C, I, 86. » J. of C, I, 88. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 53 

plates engraved, to provide paper, and to agree with printers 
to print " the bills of credit ; ^ another, June 24, " to devise 
ways and means to put the militia of America in a proper 
state for the defence of America;"^ another, July 21, "to 
superintend the press, and to have the oversight and care of 
printing the bills of credit ordered to be struck by this Con- 
gress." ^ 

With a few unimportant exceptions, the above is a full list 
of the congressional committees, up to the adjournment, August 
1. Criticism of the functions provided for in this organiza- 
tion may properly be reserved until the acts performed by the 
Congress have been considered. 

Sedion IV. The Ads of the Congress of 1775. 

As details now begin to claim the attention of the Congress, 
its acts must be grouped, and only the most important repre- 
sentative measures particularly noticed. The business of the 
Congress with which this inquiry is concerned, was : 

1. To dispose of sundry applications, on behalf of individuals. 
These were all, apparently, cases that arose under the non- 
intercourse provisions of the Association. In the case of 
Robert and John Murray, desiring to be restored to their 
former situation with respect to their commercial privileges, 
while the form of expression used by Congress implies that 
its answer was an authoritative permission, the resolve was in 
fact a formulation of the principle which, in the opinion of 
Congress, the spirit of the Association required the local com- 
mittees to observe. The answer was : 

" That where any person hath been or shall be adjudged by a 
committee, to have violated the continental association, and such 
offender shall satisfy the convention of the colony, where the 
ofience was or shall be committed, or the committee of the parish 
of St. John's, in the colony of Georgia, if the offence be committed 

» J. of C, I, 88. » J. of C, I, 88. ' J. of C, I, 121. 



54 The Beginnings of American Nationality, 

there, of his contrition for his offence, and sincere resolution to 
conform to the association for the future ; the said convention, or 
committee of the parish of St. John's aforesaid, may settle the 
terms upon which he may be restored to the favor and forgiveness 
of the public, and that the terms be published." ^ 

The fact that such subjects could be dealt with, under exist- 
ing circumstances, by local authorities alone, and that Cougress 
had no jurisdiction in the premises, could not have been more 
plainly recognized, if it had been expressly asserted. 

2. To consider requests for advice and aid to individual 
colonies. May 3, 1775, the Provincial Congress of Massachu- 
setts Bay directed to Congress a request for "direction and 
assistance."^ It urges the need of a powerful army to oppose 
"the sanguinary zeal of the ministerial army," and to end the 
" inhuman ravages of mercenary troops." The petitioners 
add : 

" We also inclose several resolves for empowering and directing 
our receiver-general to borrow the sum of one hundred thousand 
pounds, lawful money, and to issue his notes for the same; it 
being the only measures, which we could have recourse to, for 
supporting our forces, and we request your assistance in rendering 
our measures effectual, by giving our notes a currency throughout 
the continent." 

The papers referred to included a series of affidavits, by 
eye-witnesses and participants, correcting false accounts of the 
affairs of Concord and Lexington ; ^ and an address from the 
Watertown Provincial Congress of Massachusetts Bay to the 
inhabitants of Great Britain.* ^ 

On the second of June another request of similar, yet in 
some respects more weighty, import, was received from the 



1 J. of C, I, 74. For other cases, vid. pp. 70 and 134. 

«J. of C, 1, 56, ?g. =» J. of C, I, 58-66. * Same, 66-7. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 55 

same Provincial Congress.^ The resolution of Congress, in 
response to these requests, has furnished material for a vast 
deal of inconsequent argumentation. Comments upon it may 
be deferred till further facts have been cited. The text was 
as follows : 

" Resolved, That no obedience being due to the act of parlia- 
ment for altering the charter of Massachusetts Bay, nor to a 
governor, or a lieutenant-governor, who will not observe the 
directions of, but endeavor to subvert, that charter, the governor 
and lieutenant-governor of that colony are to be considered as 
absent, and their offices vacant ; and as there is no council there, 
and the inconveniences, arising from the suspension of the powers 
of government, are intolerable, especially at a time when general 
Gage hath actually levied war, and is carrying on hostilities, 
against his majesty's peaceable and loyal subjects of that colony ; 
that, in order to conform, as near as may be, to the spirit and 
substance of the charter, it be recommended to the provincial 
convention, to write letters to the inhabitants of the several places, 
which are entitled to representation in assembly, requesting them 
to chuse such representatives, and that the assembly, when chosen, 
do elect councillors ; and that such assembly, or council, exercise 
the powers of government, until a governor, of his majesty's 
appointment, will consent to govern the colony according to its 
charter." * 

May 13, "a petition from the county of Frederick, in Vir- 
ginia, addressed to the Congress, was presented and read." ^ 
May 15, "the city and county of New York having, through 
the delegates of that province, applied to Congress for advice 
how to conduct themselves with regard to the troops expected 



^ It urged the Congress " to favour them with explicit advice respecting 
the taking up and exercising the powers of civil government," and declared 
their readiness " to submit to such a general plan as the Congress may direct 
for the colonies, or make it their great study to establish such a form of 
government there, as shall not only promote their advantage, but the union 
and interest of all America." J. of C, I, 78. 

»June9, 1775. J. of C, I, 80. » J. of C, I, 69. 



K 



56 The Beginnings of Ameriaan Nationality. 

there, the Congress took the matter into consideration," ^ and 
" recommended, for the present, to the inhabitants of New York, 
that if the troops, which are expected, should arrive, the said 
colony act on the defensive, so long as may be consistent with 
their safety and security ; that the troops be permitted to remain 
in the barracks, so long as they behave peaceably and quietly, 
but that they be not suifered to erect fortifications, or take any 
steps for cutting off the communication between the town and 
country, and that if they commit hostilities or mvade private 
property, the inhabitants should defend themselves and their 
property, and repel force by force; that the warlike stores be 
removed from the town ; that places of retreat, in case of neces- 
sity, be provided for the women and children of New York, and 
that a sufficient number of men be embodied, and kept in constant 
readiness for protecting the inhabitants from insult and injury." '^ 

A single illustration of another class of applications will 
suffice. June 14, "a letter from the convention of New York, 
dated 10th instant, respecting a vessel which is stopped there, 
on suspicion of having on board provisions for the army and 
navy at Boston, was read and referred to the delegates of 
Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New York."^ The 
next day it was voted to send the following answer to the 
chairman of the New York convention : 

" Resolved, That the thanks of this Congress be given to the 
convention of New York, for their vigilance in the case of capt. 
Coffin's vessel, and that it be recommended to them that the vessel 
be unloaded, and the cargo safely stored, until all just suspicions, 
concerning the destination of it, shall be removed." * 

3. To act as the mouthpiece of the patriotic party in all the 
Golonies. The Congress appeared in this character when, July 
6, 1775, it agreed to the " Declaration by the Representatives 
of the United Colonies of North America, now met in Con- 
gress at Philadelphia, setting forth the causes and necessity of 

1 J. of C, I, 69. * J. of C, I, 70. » J. of C, I, 83. 

*J. of C, 1,83. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 57 

their taking up arms." In tracing the progress of political 
opinion, this document must be carefully compared with the 
"Declaration of Rights and Privileges" by the first Congress.^ 
Each of these deserves to constitute a chapter in all hand books 
of American history. 

A few expressions in the later document should be noticed 
in our present inquiry. The paper declares : " Our cause is 
just. Our union is perfect.'^ ^ 

The contention of this argument is that the idea conveyed 
to the people of the time by the word " union," and the fact 
which alone existed as the correlate of that word, must be 
sought in contemporary interpretations, either formal or prac- 
tical. In this instance the idea is developed in the protesta- 
tion : 

" With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most 
solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the 
utmost energy of those powers which our beneficent Creator hath 
graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by 
our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with 
unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation 
of our liberties, being with one mind resolved to die freemen 
rather than live slaves." ' 

The " union " of the time then, was the common purpose to 
postpone all minor interests in prosecuting this determination. 
The inter-colonial cooperation, which prudence dictated, in no 
recognized sense committed the colonies to any system of per- 
manent relations, after the object for which they temporarily 
combined had been attained. " Union " was, at this period, a 
concept with which the notion of fixed, organic connection 
had not yet been joined. 

4. To serve as an organ of communication between the collec- 
tive colonies and other communities or individuals. May 29, an 
address to "the oppressed inhabitants of Canada" was adopted. 



1 J. of C, I, 19. « J. of C, I, 103. * J. of C, I, 103. 

5 



58 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

In behalf of the united colonies, the Congress argued with the 
"friends and countrymen," "fellow-subjects," and "fellow- 
sufferers" of Canada, that the "fate of the Protestant and 
Catholic colonies" was "strongly linked together." The let- 
ter expressed condolence with the Canadians on account of 
their deprivation of freedom by the home government, and 
professed confidence that they " will not, by tamely bearing 
the yoke, suffer pity to be supplanted by contempt." It 
characterized, in terms intended to rouse the indignation of 
the Canadians against England, the tyranny to which, in both 
civil and religious matters, the people of Canada had been 
subjected, and the degradation which submission to such des- 
potism involved. It renewed the assurances of friendship 
made by the Congress of 1774, and called upon the Canadians 
to join the other colonies "in the defence of our common 
liberty," and especially in "imploring the attention of our 
sovereign, to the unmerited and unparalleled oppressions of 
his American subjects," that he may "at length be undeceived, 
and forbid a licentious ministry any longer to riot in the ruins 
of the rights of mankind." ^ 

July 8, the Congress adopted an address to the inhabitants 
of Great Britain.^ It claims to be a second attempt to interest 
" friends, countrymen, and brethren " of England, in prevent- 
ing the dissolution of ties which bind Englishmen in America 
with those at home. It is a strong, clear, candid presentation 
of facts in addition to those which had been reviewed in the 
first address. It demands no further remark in this connec- 
tion. 

The address to the King of Great Britain,^ adopted also 
June 8, though remarkable for its profuse expressions of 
loyalty, and the conciliatory, yet dignified tone of its plea for 
relief, adds nothing which requires mention here. 

The address to the " lord mayor, aldermen, and livery of 



' J. of C, I, 74^6. * J. of C, I, 106. » J. of C, I, 104. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 59 

London," ^ contains thanks " for the virtuous and unsolicited 
resentment shown to the violated rights of a free people ; " a 
declaration that " North America wishes most ardently for a 
lasting connection with Great Britain on terms of just and 
equal liberty;" and an assurance that while determined to 
defend themselves "like the descendants of Britons," the 
Americans still hope " that the mediation of wise and good 
citizens will prevail over despotism, and restore harmony and 
peace, on permanent principles, to an oppressed and divided 
empire." These last three addresses were, as in the similar 
cases of the preceding year, sent to Mr. Richard Penn, and the 
colony agents in London, with the request that they be imme- 
diately presented.^ 

The address to the Assembly of Jamaica is a rapid account 
of the feasons which compelled the colonies to include the 
British West India Islands in the non-intercourse agreement.' 

The import of the address to the people of Ireland,* may be 
gathered from the opening paragraph : 

" Friends and Fellow-Subjects ! 

"As the important contest, into which we have been driven, 
is now become interesting to every European state, and particu- 
larly affects the members of the British empire, we think it our 
duty to address you on the subject. We are desirous, as is 
natural to injured innocence, of possessing the good opinion of the 
virtuous and humane. We are peculiarly desirous of furnishing 
you with a true state of our motives and objects ; the better to 
enable you to judge of our conduct with accuracy, and determine 
the merits of the controversy with impartiality and precision." 

Near the end of the address is a sentence whose optimism is 
noteworthy, yet as pointed out in a similar case above, it is 
entirely anachronistic to interpret the language as indicative 
of organized nationality : 



1 J. of C, I, 111. 'J. of C, I, 112. ' J. of C, 1, 122. 

♦July 28, 1775. J. of C, I, 125. 



60 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

^'Blessed with an indissoluble union, with a variety of internal 
resources, and with a firm reliance on the justice of the Supreme 
Dispenser of all human events, we have no doubt of rising supe- 
rior to all the machinations of evil and abandoned ministers." ^ 

In the acts thus enumerated there is implied no suggestion 
of any change in the relations between the Congress and the 
colonies, since acts of like character were performed iu 1774. 

5. To devise peaceful plans and measures for the general good. 
Of this class the examples are very numerous. May 17, the 
Congress voted unanimously : 

" That all exportations to Quebec, Nova Scotia, the island of 
St. John's, Newfoundland, Georgia, except the parish of St. John's, 
and to East and West Florida, immediately cease, and that no 
provision of any kind, or other necessaries be furnished to the 
British fisheries on the American coasts, until it be otherwise 
determined by the Congress." ' 

When it is remembered that the enforcement of such a reso- 
lution depended entirely upon the determination of the towns, 
counties, or colonies, according to the condition of organization 
in each province at the time; and that it actually was enforced 
by local authorities, not by the Congress ; the baselessness of 
the claim that the Congress exerted a sovereign power in the 
premises, is apparent. 

May 29, the colonial committees were earnestly recom- 
mended to prevent the exportation (except from Massachusetts 
Bay) of provisions or necessaries of any kind to the islaud of 
Nantucket. This was to shut off a source of supply for Eng- 
lish fishermen.^ June 1, it was voted that : 

"As this Congress has nothing more in view than the defence of 
these colonies. Resolved, That no expedition or incursion ought to 
be undertaken or made, by any colony, or body of colonists, 
against or into Canada ; and that this resolve be immediately 
transmitted to the commander of the forces at Ticonderoga." * 



' J. of C, I, 128. 2J. of C, I, 71. ^J.of C, I, 76. 

* J. of C, I, 77. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 61 

June 2, it was resolved : 

" That no bill of exchange, di'aught, or order of any officer in 
the array or navy/ their agents or contractors, be received or 
negotiated, or any money supplied to them by any person in 
America ; that no provisions or necessaries of any kind be fur- 
nished or supplied to, or for the use of, the British army or navy, 
in the colony of Massachusetts Bay ; that no vessel employed in 
transporting British troops to America, or from one part of North 
America to anotlier, or warlike stores or provisions for said ti'oops, 
be freighted or furnished with provisions or any necessaries, until 
further orders from this Congress." ^ 

June 10, the towns and districts in the northern colonies 
were " recommended " to collect as much salt-petre and brim- 
stone as possible, and send it to the provincial convention at 
New York,^ The sai^ convention was " recommended " to 
put the powder mills in order for the manufacture of all 
such materials/ Like action was urged upon the southern 
colonies.^ 

June 12, the Congress issued a proclamation, earnestly 
recommending to the inhabitants of the colonies the observ- 
ance of Thursday, the 20th of July, "as a day of public 
humiliation, fasting, and prayer." ^ Whether any importance 
may be attached to the change or not, it is curious that the 
first two fast day proclamations were addressed directly to the 
people of the colonies; but after the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence the legislatures of the several states were recom- 
mended to appoint both fast and thanksgiving days.^ 

July 4, Congress resolved : 

" That the two acts passed in the first session of the present 
parliament," for restraining the trade and commerce of the colo- 
nies, were " unconstitutional, oppressive, and cruel, and that the 



» British. » J. of C, I, 78. =» .J. of C, I, 81. 

* J. of C, I, 81. 5 J. of C, I, 81. 6 J. of C, I, 81. 

U. of C, I, 576, II, 309, 469, III, 125, 229, 377, 441, 537. 



62 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

commercial opposition of these colonies, to certain acts enumerated 
in the association of the last Congress, ought to be made against 
these, until they are repealed." ^ 

July 12, Congress organized a systematic superintendence 
of Indian affairs for the colonies. Three departments were 
created : the northern, middle, and southern. Five commis- 
sioners were assigned to the southern, and three to each of the 
other two departments. The commissioners were empowered : 

" To treat with the Indians in their respective departments, in 
the name, and on behalf of the united colonies, in order to pre- 
serve peace and friendship with the said Indians, and to prevent 
their taking any part in the present commotions." ^ 

Congress elected the commissioners for the northern and 
middle departments,* and two of the five for the southern 
department.* The remaining three were left to the council of 
safety of South Carolina.^ 

July 15, Congress adopted the following preamble and 
resolution : 

" Whereas, the government of Great Britain hath prohibited 
the exportation of arms and ammunition to any of the plantations, 
and endeavored to prevent other nations from supplying us ; 
* Resolved, That for the better furnishing these colonies with the 
necessary means of defending their rights, every vessel importing 
gun-powder, salt-petre, sulphur, provided they bring with the 
sulphur four times as much salt-petre, brass field-pieces, or good 
muskets fitted with bayonets, within nine months from the date of 
this resolution, shall be permitted to load and export the produce 
of these colonies, to the value of such powder and stores aforesaid, 
the non-exportation agreement notwithstanding ; and it is recom- 
mended to the committees of the several provinces to inspect the 
military stores so imported, and to estimate a generous price for 
the same, according to their goodness, and permit the importer of 



1 J. of C, I, 99. * J. of C, I, 113. 3 j^ of c_^ i^ ii7_ 

* J. of C, I, 120-121. 5 J. of C, I, 120. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 63 

such powder and other military stores aforesaid, to export the 
value thereof and no more, in produce of any kind,' " ^ 

One of the most timely and sagacious acts of this Congress, 
was the formulation, July 31, of the principles at issue between 
the colonies and the home government. In February of that 
year the English House of Commons had passed a resolve as 
follows : 

" That when the general council and assembly, or general court 
of any of his majesty's provinces, or colonies in America, shall 
propose to make provision, according to the condition, circum- 
stance, or situation of such province or colony, for contributing 
their proportion to the common defence (such proportion to be 
raised under the authority of the general court, or general assem- 
bly of such pi'ovince or colony, and disposable by parliament) and 
shall engage to make provision also, for the support of the civil 
government, and the administration of justice in such province or 
colony, it will be proper, if such proposal shall be approved by 
his majesty, and the two houses of parliament, and for so long as 
such provision shall be made accordingly, to forbear in respect to 
such province or colony, to lay any duty, tax, or assessment, 
except only such duties as it may be expedient to continue to levy 
or impose for the regulation of commerce ; the net produce of the 
duties last mentioned to be carried to the account of such province 
or colony respectively." ^ 

It would be difficult to imagine a more cunning proposition 
of ostensible concessions by the home government. Acceptance 
of them by an American colony would have been tacit surren- 
der to all the claims against which the Americans were in revolt. 
Some of the colonies might have been caught in the snare if 
there had been no common council. The Congress scarcely 
appears to better advantage than in furnishing the colonies a 
platform upon which to unite in repelling such disingenuous 
advances. 



• J. of C, I, 118. 2J. of C, 1, 131. 



64 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

The parliamentary resolution having been referred to Con- 
gress by the assemblies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and 
Virginia, a reply was adopted which exposes the subtlety of 
the English proposal, and furnishes one of the most states- 
manlike justifications of the American demands, in the whole 
series of revolutionary declarations. In such work as this the 
service of the Congress to the colonial cause was inestimable. 
The proposal is pronounced " unreasonable and insidious." 

"Unreasonable because, if we declare we accede to it, we 
declare without reservation, we will purchase the favor of parlia- 
ment, not knowing at the same time at what price they will please 
to estimate their favor ; it is insidious, because individual colonies, 
having bid and bidden again, till they find the avidity of the 
seller too great for all their powers to satisfy, are then to return 
into opposition, divided from their sister colonies whom the minis- 
ter will have previously detached by a grant of easier terms, or by 
an artful procrastination of a definitive answer." ^ The opinion 
continues : " Upon the whole, this proposition seems to have been 
held up to the world, to deceive it into a belief that there was 
nothing in dispute between us but the mode of levying taxes ; and 
that the parliament having now been so good as to give up this, 
the colonies are unreasonable if not perfectly satisfied : Whereas, 
in truth, our adversaries still claim a right of demanding ad 
libitum, and of taxing us themselves to the full amount of their 
demand, if we do not comply with it. This leaves us without any- 
thing we can call property. But, what is of more importance, and 
what in this proposal they keep out of sight, as if no such point 
was now in contest between us, they claim a right to alter our 
charters and establish laws, and leave us without any security for 
our lives or liberties." ^ 

The last measure of this class which need be mentioned, was 
the establishment of a postal system. The exercise of power 
of this character has been made much of, in arguments upon 
the political character of the Congress. The fact that an inter- 

1 J. of C, 1, 132. « J. of C, I, 133. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 65 

colonial postal system grew naturally into a department of 
national administration, need not, however, obscure the fact 
that its origination was a measure rather of revolutionary than 
of civil policy, and that in the institution of such a service. 
Congress was acting in its capacity of temporary committee of 
safety, by virtue of authorization, the nature of which will be 
further illustrated as we proceed. This is evident by the con- 
tent of the resolution constituting the committee on the subject : 

"As the present critical situation of the colonies renders it 
highly necessary that ways and means should be devised for the 
speedy and secure conveyance of intelligence from one end of the 
continent to the other, Resolved, That ... be a committee to 
consider the best means of establishing post for conveying letters 
and intelligence through this continent." ^ 

The subsequent establishment of "a line of posts, under the 
direction of the post-master general, from Falmouth in New 
England, to Savannah in Georgia, with as many cross posts 
as he shall think fit," ^ is thus properly classed with plans for 
rendering the resistance of the colonies more effective. 

6. To devise offensive and defensive measwes to he urged upon 
the individual colonies. Thus, in view of the British design of 
invading the colonies from Quebec, the capture of Ticonderoga 
was approved (May 18, 1775), and Congress 

"earnestly recommended it to the committees of the cities and 
counties of New York and Albany, immediately to cause the said 
cannon and stores to be removed from Ticonderoga to the south 
end of lake George ; and, if necessary, to apply to the colonies of 
New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut, for such 
an additional body of forces as will be sufficient to establish a 
strong post at that place, and effectually to secure said cannon 
and stores, or so many of them as it may be judged proper to 
keep there." ' 



' May 29, 1775. J. of C, I, 76. « July 26, 1775. J. of C, I, 124. 

'J.of C, I, 72. 



66 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

Again (May 20, 1775) it was resolved unanimously : 

" That the militia of New York be armed and trained, and in 
constant readiness to act at a moment's warning ; and that a num- 
ber of men be immediately embodied and kept in that city, and 
so disposed of as to give protection to the inhabitants, in case any 
insult should be offered by the troops, that may land there, and 
prevent any attempts that may be made to gain possession of the 
city, and interrupt its intercourse with the country." ^ 

It was also voted unanimously the same day : 

" That it be recommended to the provincial convention at New 
York, to persevere the more vigorously in preparing for their 
defence, as it is very uncertain whether the earnest endeavors of 
the Congress, to accommodate the unhappy differences between 
Great Britain and the colonies, by conciliatory measures, will be 
successful." ^ 

May 30, it was resolved : 

" That the governor of Connecticut be requested immediately to 
send a strong reinforcement to the garrisons of Crown Point and 
Ticonderoga ; " " that the president acquaint governor Trtimbull, 
that it is the desire of Congress, that he should appoint a person, 
in whom he can confide, to command the forces at Crown Point 
and Ticonderoga ; " " That the provincial convention of New 
York be . . . desired to furnish" the troops at those posts "with 
provisions and other necessary stores, and to take effectual care 
that a sufficient number of batteaus be immediately provided for 
the lakes ; " and " that it be recommended to the government of 
Connecticut, or the general of the forces of that colony, to appoint 
commissaries to receive at Albany and forward the supplies of 
provisions, for the forces on lake Champlain, from the provincial 
convention of New York, and that the said convention use their 
utmost endeavors in facilitating and aiding the transportation 
thereof, from thence to where the said commissaries may direct."^ 



1 J. of C, I, 73. » J. of C, I, 73. =» J. of C, I, 77. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 67 

Recommendations were sent to various parts of the conti- 
nent urging the people to collect and send to central points all 
available sulphur and saltpetre.^ The provincial convention 
of New York was " desired immediately to apply to governor 
Trumbull to order the Connecticut troops, now stationed at 
Greenwich, Stanford, and parts adjacent, to march towards 
New York." 2 

June 19, the letters from Massachusetts Bay being taken 
into consideration, the Congress came to the following resolve : 

" That the governor of Connecticut be requested to direct all 
the forces raised in that colony, not employed at Ticonderoga and 
Crown Point, or recommended by this Congress to be marched 
towards New York, to be immediately sent to join the combined 
army before Boston; and it is earnestly recommended to the 
colony of Rhode Island, and to the provincial convention of New 
Hampshire, to send immediately to the army before Boston, such 
of the forces as are already embodied, towards their quotas of the 
troops agreed to be raised by the New England colonies." ^ 

June 22, it was resolved : 

" That the colony of Pennsylvania raise two more companies of 
riflemen, and that these, with the six before ordered to be by them 
raised, making eight companies, be formed into a battalion, to be 
commanded by such field officers, captains, and lieutenants, as 
shall be recommended by the assembly or convention of said 
colony," * 

The next day it was resolved : 

" That it be recommended to the convention of New York, that 
they, consulting with general Schuyler, employ in the army to be 
raised for the defence of America, those called Green Mountain 
Boys, under such officers as the said Green Mountain Boys shall 
chuse." ^ 



1 J. of C, I, 81. 2 June 16. J. of C, I, 85. 

' J. of C, I, 86. * J. of C, I, 87. s J. of C, I, 



68 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

June 26, the state of North Carolina being taken into con- 
sideration, the Congress came to the following resolutions : 

" Whereas it is represented to this Congress, that the enemies of 
the liberties of America are pursuing measures to divide the good 
people of the colony of North Carolina, and to defeat the Ameri- 
can association, Resolved, That it be recommended to all in that 
colony, who wish well to the liberties of America, to associate for 
the defence of American liberty, and to embody themselves as 
militia, under proper officers. 

" Resolved, That in case the assembly or convention of that 
colony shall think it absolutely necessary, for the support of the 
American association and safety of the colony, to raise a body of 
forces not exceeding one thousand men, this Congress will consider 
them as an American army, and provide for their pay." ^ 

A resolve was passed, July 1 : 

" That in case any agent of the ministry, shall induce the Indian 
tribes, or any of them, to commit actual hostilities against these 
colonies, or to enter into an offensive alliance with the British 
troops, thereupon the colonies ought to avail themselves of an 
alliance with such Indian nations as will enter into the same, to 
oppose such British troops and their Indian allies." ^ 

July 1 8, Congress resolved : 

" That it be recommended to the inhabitants of all the United 
English Colonies in North America, that all able bodied effective 
men, between sixteen and fifty years in each colony, immediately 
form themselves into regular companies of militia." ^ 

It was voted the same day : 

" That it be recommended to the assemblies or conventions in 
the respective colonies to provide, as soon as possible, sufficient 
stores of ammunition for their colonies ; also that they devise 
proper means for furnishing with arms, such effective men as are 
poor and unable to furnish themselves." 

1 J. of C, I, 89. 8 J. of C, I, 98. » J. of C, I, 1 18. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 69 

It was voted further : 

"That it be recommended to each colony to appoint a com- 
mittee of safety, to superintend and direct all matters necessary 
for the security and defence of their respective colonies, in the 
recess of their assemblies and conventions ; " and further, " that 
each colony, at their own expense, make such provision by armed 
vessels or otherwise, as their respective assemblies, conventions, or 
committees of safety shall judge expedient and suitable to their 
circumstances and situations, for the protection of their harbors 
and navigation on their sea-coasts, against all unlawful invasions, 
attacks, and depredations, from cutters and ships of war." ^ 

It was resolved, and such resolutions became very frequent 
in a short time : 

" That it be recommended to the colonies of New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, to complete 
the deficiencies in the regiments belonging to their respective 
colonies, retained by the general in the continental army before 
Boston ; " also " that it be recommended to the colony of Rhode 
Island to complete and send forward to the camp before Boston, 
as soon as possible, the . . . men lately voted by their general 
assembly." ^ 

7. To raise, organize, and regulate a continental army, and 
assume general direction of military affairs. On the 14th of 
June, it was resolved : " That six companies of expert rifle- 
men, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Mary- 
laud, and two in Virginia;" that each company, as soon as 
completed, march and join the army near Boston, to be there 
employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief 
officer of that army.^ A scale of pay was adopted ; * a form 
of enlistment was promulgated ; ^ the grades of officers were 



ij. of C, I, 119. 

*The identical resolution, the number of men excepted, was passed with 
reference to Conn. J. of C, I, 120. 

» J. of C, I, 82. * J. of C, r, 82-3-4-7, 129. ^ J. of C, I, 83. 



70 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

fixed upon, and the number in certain grades determined ; ^ 
officers of the higher grades were appointed by the Congress ;^ 
a hospital staff was organized ; ^ and elaborate rules were drawn 
up for the government of the army.* On the 15th of June 
Washington was unanimously "appointed to command all the 
continental forces raised, or to be raised, for the defence of 
American liberty." * After the form of his commission had 
been agreed upon, June 17, it was resolved unanimously, "... 
this Congress doth now declare, that they will maintain and 
assist him, and adhere to him, the said George Washington, 
with their lives and fortunes in the same cause." ^ 

Such records as the following indicate the relation of Con- 
gress to the movements of the army : 

" The Congress then resumed the consideration of affairs in the 
New- York department, and after some time spent therein, came 
to certain resolutions, which were ordered to be immediately trans- 
mitted to general Schuyler for his direction." ^ 

" Resolved, That general Schuyler be empowered to dispose of 
and employ all the troops in the New York department, in such 
manner as he may think best for the protection and defence of 
these colonies, the tribes of Indians in friendship and amity with 
us, and most effectually to promote the general interest, still pur- 
suing, if in his power, the former orders from this Congress, and 
subject to the future orders of the Commander in chief." * 

" Resolved, That a body of forces, not exceeding five thousand, 
be kept up in the New York department, for the purpose of 
defending that part of America, and for securing the lakes, and 
protecting the frontiers from incursions or invasions." ^ 

8. To create and administer a continental revenue. The signal 
for the beginning of that financial policy which afterwards 



1 J. of C, I, 84. 2 j_ of Q^^ i^ 85-6, 120. => J. of C, I, 124. 

* J. of C, I, 90-98. ^ J. of C, I, 83. 

^ J. of C, I, 85. Other instructions to Washington appear under date 
June 20, in the Secret Journals of Cong., Vol. I, p. 17. Ed. of 1821. 
"• J. of C, I, 89. 8 July 20, 1775. J. of C, I, 120. 

9J. of C, I., 123. July 25. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 71 

exerted so nearly a decisive influence upon the formation of 
permanent interstate relations, was given, June 22, in the reso- 
lution : 

" That a sum not exceeding two million of Spanish milled dol- 
lars be emitted by the Congress in bills of credit, for the defence 
of America." ^ 

On the 29th of July, it was voted : 

'* That each colony provide ways and means to sink its propor- 
tion of the bills ordered to be emitted by this Congress, in such 
manner as may be most effectual and best adapted to the condi- 
tion, circumstances and equal mode of levying taxes in such colony." 

" That the proportion or quota of each colony be determined 
according to the number of inhabitants, of all ages, including 
negroes and mulattoes in each colony." * 

" That each colony pay its respective quota in four equal annual 
payments," ^ and that for this end, the several provincial assem- 
blies, or conventions, provide for laying and levying taxes in their 
respective provinces or colonies, towards sinking the continental 
bills ; that the said bills be received by the collectors in payment 
of such taxes, &c." * 

The same day (July 29) it was resolved : 

"That Michael Hillegas, and George Clymer, esqrs., be joint 
treasurers of the United Colonies ; that the treasurers reside in 
Philadelphia, and that they shall give bond, with surety, for the 
faithful performance of their office, in the sum of one hundred 
thousand dollars." 



U. of C, 1,87-8. 

^ An arbitrary apportionment was made to guide until a census could be 
taken. J. of C, I, 130. In a later section the acts of the separate colonies 
in making this paper legal tender, providing penalties for counterfeiting, 
&c., will be cited in exposure of the fallacy of the claim that the Congress 
was here exercising " one of the highest acts of sovereignty." 

3 J. e. in terms ending Nov., 1779, 1780, 1781, and 1782. J. of C, I, 130. 

*The resolutions of the provincial Congress of New York (May 30, 1775), 
on the subject of continental revenues, should be compared at this point. 
Am. Arch., IV, II, 1254, 1262. 



72 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

" That the provincial assemblies or conventions do each choose 
a treasurer for their respective colonies, and take sufficient security 
for the faithful performance of the trust." ^ 

In illustration of the manner and purpose of disbursements, 
at this time, the votes of the last day of the session may be 
cited : 

" Resolved, That the sum of five hundred thousand dollars,. be 
immediately forwarded from the continental treasuiy, to the pay- 
master general, to be applied to the use of the army in Massa- 
chusetts-Bay, in such manner, as general Washington, or the 
commander in chief for the time being, by his warrants, shall limit 
and appoint ; and if the above sum shall be expended before the 
next meeting of the Congress, then that general Washington, or 
the commander in chief for the time being, be empowered to draw 
upon the continental treasury, for the sum of two hundred thou- 
sand dollars, in favor of the paymaster general, to be applied for 
the use and in the manner above mentioned." * 

A similar appropriation was made for the use of General 
Schuyler in the New- York department.^ It was also voted : 

" That a sum not exceeding one hundred and seventy-five 
thousand dollars be paid to the provincial convention of New- 
York, to be applied towards the discharge of the moneys advanced 
and the debts contracted for the public service, by the said pro- 
vincial convention and the committee of Albany, in pursuance of 
the directions of this Congress ; and that the said provincial con- 
vention account to this Congress, at their next meeting, for the 
application of the said money." * 

A resolution of the same nature was passed in favor of the 
colony of Connecticut.^ It was further resolved : 

" That the sum of sixteen thousand dollars be paid to the dele- 
gates of the colony of Pennsylvania, in full for the like sum by 
them borrowed by order of the Congress, on the 3d of June last, 



1 J. of C, I, 130. " J. of C, I, 134. =» J. of C, I, 135. 

*J. of C, 1, 134. 5 J. of C, I, 135. - 



The Beginnings of Ameriean Nationality. 73 

for the use of the continent;'" and "That the sum of ten thou- 
sand dollars be placed in the hands of the delegates of Pennsyl- 
vania, or any three of them, for contingent services, and that out 
of the same, be paid the expenses incurred for raising and arming 
the rifle companies, and for expresses and other small charges, of 
which the Congress have not been able to procure exact accounts ; 
and that the said committee do lay before the Congress, at their 
next meeting, an account of their proceedings in that matter." ^ 

Section V. Conclusions. 

This review justifies the following conclusions upon the 
questions raised at the end of the last section. The Congress 
of 1775 M^as not content with mere expression of opinions. 
It took a large view of its powers. It realized that its 
efficiency depended wholly upon the acceptance of its acts 
by the principals of the different delegations; but, follow- 
ing its judgment as to what the patriotism of the colonies 
would approve and sustain, it initiated action of various kinds, 
which, from the beginning, assumed the certainty of adoption 
by the colonies, and derived all its energy from the probability 
of such ratification. The Congress doubtless exceeded the letter 
of the instructions received by a portion of its members ; but 
this was not from any misconception of those instructions, nor 
from any uncertainty about the essentially advisory character 
even of those of its proceedings which appeared most peremp- 
tory. In pointing out to the colonies the direction which their 
preparations for resistance ought to take, the Congress no more 
acted upon an imagined authority to command the colonies, 
than does the lookout at the bow of the ship, when he reports 
the direction of danger to the officer of the deck. The Con- 
gress unquestionably enjoyed a prestige at this juncture, which 
it subsequently lost. The people, and even the provincial con- 
ventions, occasionally addressed it in a tone which indicated 
that they unconsciously attributed to it power which it plainly 
did not possess. 

' J. of C, I, 135. 2j_of c., I, 135. 

6 



74 The Beginnmgs of American Nationality. 

It would be easy to collate a long array of expressions from 
the votes of the Congress, which show that its language was 
influenced, to a certain extent, towards tlie assumption of an 
importance inconsistent with its real power. Nothing could 
be more natural, inasmuch as, under the circumstances, what- 
ever the Congress decided or recommended the colonies were 
almost sure to adopt. The prestige of such influence could 
hardly fail to mould advice sometimes into the semblance of 
requirement. I am unable to find a single evidence, however, 
that the members ever entertained a doubt about their actual 
subordination to the colonial assemblies which they represented. 

As the provincial congresses grew more accustomed to their 
position, and as intercourse with the Continental Congress 
exhibited the limitations of the latter in a thousand examples, 
all parties began to understand the precise character of the 
continental body, and its relation to the States. Resistance 
would be impotent unless it was concerted.^ The Congress 
was the only possible medium of coordination and combina- 
tion. It was the clearing-house of colonial news and opinion. 
The situation, resources, temper, strength and weakness of the 
protesting communities could nowhere be so advantageously 
considered ; nor could the disposition of their available means 
of defence be so prudently made from any other position. In 
adopting recommendations that came from such vantage 
ground, the colonies were sure of directing their operations by 
the utmost strategic and economic wisdom. 

Or again, the Congress was the central office of a cooperative 
political signal service. Its bulletins were enacted into rules 
by the colonial assemblies, not because they were recognized as 
statutes, but because they were accepted as the most accurate 
readings of the signs of the times. The storm, to be averted 
if possible, or to be breasted if necessary, was just breaking 
upon different sections of the country. The Congress could 



^ This idea was well expressed in resolutions of citizens of Savannah, June 
13, 1775. Am. Arch., IV, II, 1544. 



The Beginnings of American Nationality. 75 

best calculate its course and its character, and could best sug- 
gest precautions and expedients. 

The Congress was a sagacious committee of safety. It knew 
the minds of the people it acted for. It knew the occasions 
for action. It knew the possibilities of action. It knew what 
demands could be made and it made them ; not as a legislative 
chamber would make them, but as popular leaders, who had 
the ear of the colonial assemblies. Its calls for the mobiliza- 
tion of the militia were enforced by the fact that there was work 
for the militia to do, and by the assurance involved in the 
calls that the colonies would collectively assume the responsi- 
bility incurred by any individual colony in undertaking the 
work. Its creation of a continental army was a sensible 
" straight cut " to the association of forces, implying nothing 
wdiatever about permanent relations of Congress to colonies.^ 
It was made possible simply by the expressed or tacit assent 
of each colony to the temporary omission of formalities taken 
for granted in the whole proceeding. Its issuance of bills of 
credit was banking upon the public spirit of the colonial cor- 
porations. As agents holding indefinite powers of attorney, 
the delegates pledged the credit of their principals. All the 
power they had for such a purpose had been created in the 
colonies, and by the colonies, and could be authoritatively in- 
terpreted and actually exerted only by the parties giving it. 
The pledge of the credit of a colony by its delegation was not 
the source of the colony's obligation, but the colony entered 
into an obligation by authorizing or endorsing its delegates' 
pledge. In a word, the Congress of 1775 did no act by any 
power other than that which the separate corporations repre- 



^ I mean by this that the colonists did not consciously commit themselves 
to any form of organization, or to any permanent relationship of an organ- 
ized interstate character, by allowing the Congress thus to act for the whole. 
A pliilosophical view of their experience discovers in the very naturalness 
of such an arrangement the foreshadowing of a permanent organ of similar 
action. The people had not, however, willed the establishment of the 
future order. 



76 The Beginnings of American Nationality. 

sented individually contributed. It was a Congress of depu- 
ties, not of legislators. Its executive operations were vicarious, 
not functional. It performed no single act which did not 
derive viability from susteutation by the local powers. Its 
history forms a record of localism rising superior to itself, to 
meet the demands of a crisis. That imagination runs riot 
which turns this magnificent effort into the definitive abdica- 
tion of localism. The last time the proposal of centralization 
was formally broached, it was rejected.^ Not constitution 
building but constitution saving was the object now. The 
colonies combined not to substitute one dependence for another, 
but to make their relation to England one of independence.^ 
In the freedom of that further actual independence which 
English policy had made the only alternative with submission, 
the colonial corporations created a medium of common offence 
and defence in which localism did not expire, but in which 
localism displayed its maximum possibilities for resistance 
and aggression. 

These conclusions will be confirmed by considering the same 
set of relations from the opposite point of view. 

Section VI. The Correspo7id,ing Acts of the Colonies. 

The people of the several colonies were meanwhile adopting 
temporary organizations for the control of their corporate 
affairs. These organizations, or their successors, inherited or 
usurped all the prerogatives which had belonged to the charter 
organizations. The people gradually recognized them as the 
organs of popular rights of self-government, sanctioned there- 
fore by a law superior to that of the constitution. The people 
did not at first have definite and unanimous opinions about the 



^ Albany Congress of 1754. 

- 1, e. in the sense in which the word was used in the earliest discussions ; 
independence of unconstitutional parliamentary or ministerial dictation. 
Vid. Am. Arch., IV, II, 1548-9 ; and same, 21. 



The Beginnings of Amet'ican Nationality. 77 

respective spheres of town, county and colonial authorities ; 
but it is true in general that, wherever such a change in form 
was necessary, the provincial congress assumed the executive 
and legislative position from which the governor and the 
charter legislature were displaced. The fact to be placed over 
against the description of the general Congress is that the 
people of the separate colonies acquiesced in the assumption 
and exercise, by their provincial assemblies, of every essential 
power of government. The evidence of this is next in order. 
Its importance in the argument will appear at a later stage of 
the investigation.' 



' The evidence which I have arranged chronologically on this point, in 
the case of each of the thirteen colonies in turn, justifies certain general- 
izations irreconcilable with the traditional views of inter-colonial relations 
at this period. It establishes the fact that the colonial authorities looked 
to the Continental Congress not for sanctions, in the legal sense, but for signs. The 
evidence to this effect becomes more and more decisive as we approach 
.July, 1776. 

At the end of the next chapter this body of evidence will be discussed as 
a whole ; first, in its bearing upon the conclusion just indicated ; second, with 
reference to its bearing upon the constitutional significance of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. The details to be placed in evidence, with respect 
to the independent action of the individual colonies, are so numerous that 
the argument must be interrupted at this point, to be resumed in a future 
number of the Studies. 



[Notes supplementary to the Johns Hopkins University Stndies 

in Historical and Political Science, 1890, No. 1. [Wiiole No. 10]. 



THE NEEDS OF SELF-SUPPORTING WOMEN.* 

By Miss CLARE de GRAFFENRIED, 
Department of Labor, Washington, D. C. 

Within a generation the heroic working girl has been trans- 
formed in character. Emerging from a simple life with few wants 
to a complex and artificial existence, the burden of social disad- 
vantage weighs upon her, and she becomes more alive to her im- 
portance as a social power. She refuses to starve ; she will strike, 
she will sin. As Gunton points out in Wealth and Progress, wider 
opportunities for the masses must precede the formation of higher 
social desires and character. Shorter hours of labor, signifying 
more leisure and less exhaustion of the faculties, would soon 
create new wants, establish better habits, incite to friendly inter- 
course, to reading, travel, all those intellectual enjoyments which 
are the measure of civilization. Wherever man's social opportu- 
nities have been most limited, industrial and political progress has 
been slowest. Wherever women and children are condemned to 
excessive toil, wherever " the fatal industrial policy prevails of 
sacrificing human lives to produce and accumulate wealth, instead 
of the broad and humane policy of using wealth to save and improve 
human lives," there the homes are always most miserable, there 
reign illiteracy, pauperism and vice. Each reduction in the hours 
of work, from sixteen to fourteen, from fourteen to twelve, from 
twelve to ten, has occasioned immediate and enormous improve- 
ment in the condition of the laboring classes. Shorter hours tend 
not only to provide occupation for millions of unemployed, but 
they will stimulate production and widen our markets by multi- 
plying wants ; they will make education possible, and conduce to 
a higher social and moral development in the home. 

To all earnest minds interested in economic and ethical problems, 
the absorbing question is how to give our toiling sisters wider 
opportunities for self-development ? Why, despite the good which 

*Read at W. C. A. International Conference, Baltimore. 



2 The Needs of Self-Supporting Women. [80 

the Women's Christian Associations and kindred societies accom- 
plish, do they often fail to benefit the most needy and meritorious? 
Evidently one stumbling block in the way of usefulness is the 
de haul en has tone which pervades all efforts at conciliation and 
help. We meet our industrial friends in a false spirit. The 
" lady," however conscientious and charitable, who at the working- 
girls' club scorns to treat shop women and seamstresses as equals, 
proclaims by her manner as well as by her words : " God made 
the lower classes different and they are different ; why tell them 
otherwise ? " Until these flaunting airs of superiority, this latent 
phariseeism and aggressive patronage are exterminated, the trials 
and sufferings of our self-supporting women will never be laid 
bare, and practical relief will never be administered. 

The wants of the ordinary female worker must be comprehended 
within the narrow average of $5 a week for food, raiment, and the 
satisfaction of the intellectual and spiritual nature. To some of 
us who know the personal sacrifices and resolute self-denials of 
these noble, humble lives, it seems almost mockery to preach, from 
the stand-point of our ampler incomes and habitual self-indulgence, 
the wisdom of small economies and more ideal desires. Yet nobler 
wants may be created in the breast of the roughest, most untaught 
creature, and along with these wants, greater efficiency may be 
gained for the first essential with every toiler — self-maintenance. 
For, until she is equipped with self-sup^^orting arts, the higher 
nature is in abeyance. Until her home is neat, wholesome and 
well-ordered, it is useless to expect any lasting elevation of char- 
acter or morals. The best stitcher, the best type-writer ought 
also to be shown how to become the thriftiest housekeeper, most 
helpful wife and wisest mother. 

Patient observers who have watched the life of the laboring 
classes and studied their needs, emphatically urge industrial train- 
ing in schools, clubs, guilds and societies, as one remedy nearest at 
hand for social ills. 

Encourage the working-girl to cut and make her own dresses 
and relieve her overburdened parent. By practical examples, 
teach upholstery, bed-making, laundrying, house-cleaning, nursing 
the sick, the care of sleeping apartments. Fit up lecture and 
class-rooms as a model tenement, and give amusing, instructive 
demonstrations in economizing space, utilizing window seats and 



81] The Needs of Self- Supporting Women. 3 

lounges for clothes-presses, ventilating rooms, setting tables and 
turning simple decorations to effective account. Adopt a baby — 
nothing would delight young girls so much. Show them how to 
sew its little garments, to arrange its cradle, to feed and tend it, 
above all, how to leave it sometimes in repose. Thus would be 
saved the precious lives of thousands of the future offspring of our 
industrial community. Instruct the novices in housekeeping how 
to buy and to market. Make them understand that wastefulness 
in the home is as reprehensible as drunkenness, and that to throw 
away money on bad material and short weight is as sinful as to 
burn greenbacks in the stove. Let a new gospel obtain. Instead 
of loving their neighbors as themselves and gadding too much, 
they must love the family as themselves and help father, sister and 
brother. Impress upon the toilers that with our sex rests the 
responsibility for unhappy homes. Aid self-supporting women to 
re-create their households, to do away with the filth and misery 
which beget those morbid physical conditions that only alcoholic 
poisons can appease. Induce the mothers to choose poor living 
with longer schooling for the girls and boys, instead of comforts 
bought with the unhallowed earnings of overworked and ruined 
little ones, and thus abate the parent's sinful share in the fearfiil 
abuse of child labor. In fact, all educational effort for workers 
should aim at practical training and enlarged opportunities, social, 
intellectual and moral. 

The Women's Christian Associations represent the most power- 
ful and progressive religious sentiment bent on good works and 
the broadest usefulness. Sentiment, however, is not always backed 
by knowledge of actual conditions. A minister of the gospel, 
prominent in foreign missions, stoutly denied that white women 
are ever employed in tobacco factories, when in his own city a 
stone's throw from his home hundreds of females of the Anglo- 
Saxon race delved at the weed amid the most degrading surround- 
ings. True understanding of the real situation must precede all 
successful reforms. The influence of the Women's Christian 
Associations, based on intelligent inquiry and thrown upon the 
side of industrial tuition, shorter hours of work, better factory laws 
and stricter inspection, the abolition of child labor, greater 
advantages for female workers, would bring to bear upon the 
burdens of our drudging sisters all the enginery of church aid and 



4 The Needs of Self-Supporting Women. [82 

the prodigious momentum of social enthusiasm. Yet few New 
York philanthropists realize the appalling problems of tenement 
house crowding and foreign inundation. Not many have ever 
walked among the Italians in the Mulberry Street bend, or visited 
the Russians and Armenians in the great Mott Street flat, or 
beheld the Jew's refuse market in Hester Street, on a Friday 
afternoon. How often do even the charitably disposed cross the 
thresholds of the poorest, sit on greasy chairs or vermin-infested 
lounges and watch the barefooted, perspiring mother drag her 
baby about on one arm while she cooks and washes with the 
other? Who has seen, what everywhere exists, overworked 
parents with their ten children, all under 16 years of age, begrimed 
and foul-bodied, in a steaming kitchen that looks like a receptacle 
for garbage, eating their supper of bread, tea, and cold boiled 
cabbage ? How difficult to enter into the motives or desires of 
the pretty girl who never breathes any other air than that laden 
with odors of frying fat and vile tobacco, nor knows other sur- 
roundings than endless toil and pinching poverty, except the 
deadly diversions of the street! If she escapes the pitfalls to 
which these diversions lead, and fortunately marries, she too, 
unless practical benevolence interpose, will live in filth as her 
mother lives. She will eat unwholesome food because unable to 
cook, and buy tainted meat or rancid butter. She will be cheated 
in her shoes, her flannels, her furniture, and tricked by insurance 
or installment agents out of all her savings. Unhandy with her 
needle, she will clothe the nakedness of her baby with piano covers 
or disused tidies, instead of warm and suitable garments. Ignorant 
of the care of infancy, she will drench the little one with baths 
till pneumonia ensues, and, having killed it perhaps by violating 
all sanitary laws, will, in order to pay the undertaker, break down 
her own health by toiling in the mill while also doing her house- 
work, till exhausted nature takes revenge, and the pauper hospital 
receives another victim. 

The minutest instruction, the personal example of wiser women 
alone can bring about radical change in the methods of untaught 
girls or mothers. Not many members of charitable associations, 
however, with absorbing home duties, committees and' visit- 
ing list, can cope with the tremendous crises occurring in the 
every day industrial life of the subjects of their care. Their 



83] The Needs of Self- Supporting Women. 5 

wealth nevertheless will command the services and enlist for the 
cause the heart, soul and brain of clear-headed, earnest officials. 
With a tact which is nothing more than common sense sanctified, 
such appointees would devote all their energies to the needs of 
workers. Not amateurs any longer, but professionals are required 
to take these important interests out of the realm of mere senti- 
ment and philanthropy into that of the economic and practical. 
The magnificent executive corps whom the " silent partners" have 
placed at the head of these great benevolent enterprises in the 
largest cities, deal with the tragedies, with the inexperienced, the 
disappointed, the imperiled, better than any mere periodical 
visitor, however willing, however kind. Particularly in outlying 
districts where modern scientific methods of managing charities 
and reforms have not penetrated, specialists are indispensable. 
One does not call in a plumber to tie up an artery, or a butcher 
to model one's bust. 

Immediate improvement and extension of the homes supported 
by the Christian Associations, must answer the objection of gratui- 
tous critics, that superior accommodations at cheap rates encourage 
low wages, entice young women from the country and react for 
evil on the large body of toilers unable to share such bounty. 
The charges of opponents hold good wherever sympathy and 
generosity surround these boarding homes with comforts which 
the hard cash of the inmates could not buy. False standards are 
thus created and the beneficiaries are so demoralized that in every 
relation of life they expect to get more than they give. To abolish 
the useful homes, however, while inflicting hardship on the deserv- 
ing woman who seeks their roof less for cheap board than for 
respectability, would neither raise wages nor tie the country girl 
to the worn-out farm. Retain the boarding homes, but make 
them go to the root of the workers' need. They must be multi- 
plied, cheapened, located in quarters teeming with homeless girls. 
Have them plain enough and big enough and cordial enough for 
the tobacco stripper, the lint-covered cotton operative, the under- 
paid sewing drudge starving in a garret while the slop shops fatten 
on her life blood. 

If the headquarters of the Christian Associations were estab- 
lished among the tenement boarding places and should feed and 
house as cheaply, fewer young women with illegitimate children 



6 The Needs of Self-Supporting Women, [84 

would be found, seeking to palliate their fall by the oft-repeated 
lamentation : " I had no mother and no home and knocked about 
from one boarding house to another." In the seething industrial 
centres, in the tenements themselves, there should be little unob- 
trusive homes to allure the poorest and lead them through neatness, 
order and purer standards to a higher life. Where foreign 
immigration flows fastest is there most call for respectable super- 
vision and protection. Although the virtue of young maidens 
may be unaffected by the horrors of a brief steerage passage, will 
it resist the continued pressure of low wages reinforced by immoral 
lodgings where, besides the large family, from twelve to twenty 
men and women sleep indiscriminately on the floor of two rooms 
ten feet square ? 

Some self-supporting girls have inaugurated a great reform 
which it would be possible to operate for the benefit of thousands. 
Five newly-landed Irish flax mill operatives club together, hire a 
tenement, furnish it plainly in common, and, while one keeps 
house, four work in the factory. They share all expenses, plan, 
economize, save, and in their warm bed-rooms and humble little 
parlor, get not only real domestic life unshadowed by the eclipsing 
" institution." but a splendid education in adaptiveness, versatility 
and self-control. 

Scores of young women are already solving thus the domestic 
problem, which for them is also complicated by sharpest want. 
Might not Christian Associations besides multiplying, cheapening 
and brightening the boarding homes, engage in the noble enter- 
prise in every industrial centre of helping mill employes, cigar 
makers, clerks, teachers, all the friendless and solitary, to found 
small co-operative households ? The inmates would group accord- 
ing to convenience, occupation or congeniality, one of the par- 
ticipants being maintained as supervisor, or some suitable head 
being found among the hundreds of genteel unemployed every- 
where clamoring for work. Colonize thus in the lowliest tenement 
ten girls who can pay but two dollars a week, yet would like to 
" have a say " about their food and the outlay of their funds. 
They would feel that what physical comfort they could get by 
good judgment and close management out of twenty dollars a 
week would be theirs, and not an iota more. By a sense of 
responsibility the young housekeepers would be stimulated to 



85] The Needs of Self-Supporting Women. 7 

realize that the abode is their own, their castle, their haven, where 
they are not fleeced by a landlady, nor disciplined by a committee, 
but are themselves the architects of its well-being. The attributes 
of domesticity and the highest elements of independence and moral 
accountability would thus be developed. 

Grade such co-operative colonies by the resources of the pro- 
jectors. Let the inmates vote who shall be received and how their 
home-life shall be conducted. The great benevolent organizations 
should l)estow upon these undertakings the benefit of their superior 
opportunities Avith landlords for securing cheap and sanitary 
quarters. Each little settlement might be kept under the oversight 
of one member of the Associations or official staff, to whom the 
occupants could appeal when in trouble. With the countenance 
of such advisers the girls should see their 3'oung men friends 
on Sunday. If cfenied this privilege on their only leisure day, 
how tempting and how perilously easy it is for them to go to the 
rooms of their male acquaintances under disreputable auspices. 
Sympathy with youth and youth's iudLscretious and yearnings 
would naturally avoid hide-bound regulations and foster indi- 
viduality, while broad catholicity respects religious prejudices and 
shelters the worthy however diverse their creeds. 

Not alone the poorest demand help and a broader field. Well 
to-do working women with good homes, of whom all oiTr large 
cities boast an increasingly numerous and prosperous element, 
need uplifting from the deadening automatic routine, or the de- 
pressing influences of sordid authority, frivolous companionship, 
inane gossip and jests and petty jealousies. The utter poverty of 
resources, the shy, awkward unresponsiveness of the home-staying 
must be combated by wisely selected recreations and heathful 
activities. Around the hearthstone the best girls are often the 
dullest and saddest, burdens to themselves, useless to the family, 
incapable of interesting the children or brightening the home-coming 
of the father, their ideas petrified at the source. To these, priceless 
would be the increased social opportunities that guilds, societies 
and clubs can aflbrd — change of scene, wider acquaintance, lectures, 
games, question clubs, collections of flowers, insects and stones, 
wonders of natural life — all the pretty information which filters 
through the fortunate high school student to the uneducated parents 
and juveniles, but which the fireside of the worker never enjoys. 



8 The Needs of Self-Supportmg Women. [86 

The rough, the ignorant, the unhappy and lonely, who under 
genial influences would flower into gentle and beautiful woman- 
hood, too often elude the present methods of Christian Associations, 
There is in science no classification of man into lower and higher 
orders. Without meaning to be autocratic or carping, it behooves 
me to say as the messenger of nearly 12,000 self-supporting girls 
whom I have personally interviewed, that the most deserving are 
barred out by the class distinctions which mark almost every phase 
of philanthrophy. In shojDS and factories the needy cases are well 
known. The forewomen reach them, the companions in toil know 
the dilapidated dwelling to which little comforts often find their 
way, and even money, saved from the meagre earnings of unselfish 
friendship. Were prominent young women in the tobacco, under- 
wear and box factories, the mills and rope walks of great cities, 
members of charitable associations, entitled 'to dispense their 
privileges, not mere subjects for experiment, they could point 
out many a lonely sufferer, bring many outcasts into the fold, 
besides greatly enlarging their own sphere of usefulness. But 
we are wont to seek even the stoically reticent, the heroic, the 
^martyred as patron to beneficiary, as proud to the humble, as 
rich to the lowly, not as friend to friend. So long as Christian 
work keeps up the hollow mockery of the " lady " succoring the 
working woman, so long will the working woman resent or hold 
aloof from such beneficence, so long will reforms languish. 

In the industrial centres as well as in the handsome streets, 
rooms should be open for the social intercourse and physical and 
mental refreshment of the laborer's household. If first made 
comfortable, then one is more easily made good. Beguile there 
the children, the girls, above all, the overburdened mothers. 
Work upon the family as a unit, instead of alienating the daugh- 
ter from her home. Strengthen domestic ties, weld natural 
relationship. Talk more about ethics sometimes, even if less about 
religion. To interest mothers and daughters concerning the care 
of infancy, the discipline of children would check the reprehensi- 
ble indulgence that often riots in the homes of the poor. Around 
many firesides, it is true, hover marvellous patience, almost angelic 
self-forgetfulness, shaming the best tempered women of leisure 
whose petty annoyances dwindle beside the wearing trials of the 
house-mother who is drudge, seamstress, nurse, pack-horse, from 



87] The Needs of Self-Supporting Women. 9 

5 a. ra. till 11 p. m., yet kisses her fifteenth baby with all the 
passion of first maternity. Often, however, the gravest offenses 
go unpunished, or trifling faults incur a volley of vituperation. 
The object most commonly seen in my rounds was a heavy leathern 
strap, three inches broad, cut at one end into ribbons, the more 
effectually to sting. Children, big and little, are beaten by their 
parents with this unholy implement, and wee sisters of ten and 
eleven left in charge of infants and toddlers ply it vigorously on 
each offender. This is a type of the low civilization with which 
modern philanthropy must deal. 

In every manufacturing town. North, West and South, thought- 
ful and educated women, as missionaries and practical teachers, 
have a more useful field than the valley of the Ganges or the 
Yang-tse-Kiang. The neglected cotton operatives of my own 
State, Georgia, the tobacco workers, shirt and overall makers, and 
mill employes of many magnificent cities need deliverance from 
ignorance and preventable misery no more imperiously than the 
unhappy dwellers in the numerous wretched tenements which in 
the most flourishing New England towns flank the public libraries 
and the grand and spacious schools. 

In Fall River are 58 enormous mills, more than 20,000 opera- 
tives, nearly 12,000 of whom are females, a tenement system 
notoriously bad, thousands of solitary young women, and no 
Women's Christian Association, nor any boarding home under 
distinctly educating or uplifting auspices. In Nashua, Manchester 
and Dover, New Hampshire, Biddeford, Lewiston and Augusta, 
Maine, while the mill corporations provide as far as possible 
excellent dwellings and boarding accommodations, yet one half 
the euiployes live in tenements which, except as to greater space 
and better light, are as filthy and dilapidated as the worst habita- 
tions of New York. Not only are the Poles, Bohemians, Russians, 
Irish, and French Canadians often illiterate and forlorn, but in 
many States some of our sisters of native American descent are 
almost in barbarism. The sin of leaving: our fellow beinffs in 
unsanitary, fever-breeding homes, huddling in degrading crowds, 
in mental darkness and moral irresponsibility and vice, is one 
which each intelligent, earnest woman must bring home to herself 
and answer for to her own conscience. Rescue the children, at 
least; ward off* from future generations an inherited curse. Clear 



10 The Needs of Self-Supporting Women. [88 

our cities and manufacturing towns of the tenement plague spots, 
by a personal crusade against their hideous influences. Elevate 
their inmates by personal visits, personal help, the ministry of the 
hand, palm to palm, as woman to woman, not as patron to bene- 
ficiary. Prove the truth of Tolstoi's words, that in order to do a 
man good, one must be on friendly terms with him. 

Nor must effort cease when through religious conviction or 
fellowship in high ideals our working sisters are first uplifted. 
The real needs just formulate themselves as the new life begins. 
The girl who could not read does not by a change of heart learn 
all the mysteries of erudition. As a Christian woman with a 
future before her, more than ever does she require to spell or write 
or cipher better, to be taught the amenities of a politer sphere. 
The work she could do as a worldling may be now forbidden by 
her conscience, and she must be helped to a higher individuality. 
When she turns from the worn and easy path of ignorance, fri- 
volity and self-indulgence to the discipline of new purposes, this 
is her hour of greatest peril — the hour in which she pleads, 
inarticulately but earnestly and eloquently, not to be set adrift in 
the frail strength of untried resolutions, but to be given the 
higher education, the better industrial, social and moral opportu- 
nities that alone can meet allthe needs of self-supporting women. 

January, 1890. 



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and the slave-code in Maryland, the status of the Indians and of the indentured 
white servants, the slave, manumission, and the free negro. It ends with the 
beginning of the late war. With the exception of Dr. Moore's Notes on Slavery 
in Massachusetts, it is believed that there is no other study of slavery as an insti- 
tution, of similar scope and purport. 



NOTES SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE STUDIES. 

The publication of a series of Notes was begun in January, 1889. The follow- 
ing have thus far been issued : 

1. MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. By Dr. Albert Shaw, of Minne- 
apolis, Reader on Municipal Government, J. H. U. 

2. SOCIAL WORK IN AUSTRALIA AND LONDON. By William Grey, of the 
Denison Club, London. 

3. ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. By Professor Herbert B. 
Adams. 

4. THE PROBLEM OF CITY GOVERNMENT. By Hon. Seth Low, President of 
Columbia College. 

5. THE LIBRARIES OF BALTIMORE. By Mr. P. R.Uhler, of the Peabody Institute. 

6. WORK AMONG THE WORKINGWOMEN IN BALTIMORE. By Professor 
H. B. Adams. 

7. CHARITIES: THE RELATION OF THE STATE, THE CITY, AND THE 
INDIVIDUAL TO MODERN PHILANTHROPIC WORK. By A. G. Warner, Ph.D., 
sometime General Secretary of th:' Cliarity Organization Society of Baltimore, now Associate 
Professor in the. University of Nebraska. 

8. LAW^ AND HISTORY. By Walter B. Soaife, LL. B., Ph. D. (Vienna), Reader on 
Historical Geography in the Johns Hopkins University. 

9. THE NEEDS OF SELF-SUPPORTING WOMEN. By Miss Clare de Graffen- 
BEID, of the Department of Labor, Washington, D. C. 

These Notes are sent ivithont charge, to regular subscribers to the Studies. They are sold at Jive cents 
each; twenty Jive copies will be Jurnished for $1.00. 



Separate volumes, bound in cloth, will be sold as follows : 

SERIES I.— LOCAL INSTITUTIONS. 479 pp. $4.00. 

SERIES II.— INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMICS. 629 pp. Sl.OO. 

SERIES III. -MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, AND WASHINGTON. 59.5 pp. $4.00. 

SERIES IV. -MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND LAND TENURE. GOOpp. $3.50. 

SERIES v.— MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT, HISTORY AND POLITICS. 559 pp. 
$3.50. 

SERIES VI.— THE HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 
540 pp. $:150. 

SERIES VII.— SOCIAL SCIENCE, MUNICIPAL AND FEDERAL GOVERN- 
MENT. 628 pp. $3.5U. 

The set of seven volumes is noxo offered for $21.00; luith five extra volumes, "Ketv ffaveii," 
"Baltimore," '^ Philndelphia." " Locid Constilntioiial History" Vol. I, and '^ Negro in Maryland" 
altogether twelve volumes, $30.00 ; with the current eighth series, $32.00. 



All business communications should be addressed to the Publication 
Agency of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Sub- 
scriptions will also be received, or single copies furnished by any of the following 

AMEEICAN agents: 

New York.— G. P. Putnam's Sons, 27 W. 23d Baltimore.— .John Murphy & Co.; Cushings 

St. &■ Bailey. 

New Haven. — E. P. Judd. Cincinnati. — Robert Clarke & Co. 

Boston. — Damrell & Upham; W. B. Clarke Indianapolis. — Bowen-Merrill Co. 

& Co. Chicago.— A. C. McClurg & Co. 

Providence. — Tibbitts & Preston. Louisville. — Flexner & Staadeker. 

Philadelphia. — Porter & Coates; J. B. Lip- San Francisco. — Bancroft Company. 

pincolt Co. New Orleans. — George F. Wharton. 

■Washington. — W. H. Lowdermilk & Co.; Richmond.— Randolph & English. 

Brentano's. Toronto. — Carswell &. Co. 

Montreal. — William Foster Brown & Co. 

EUROPEAN AGENTS: 

London.— Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Berlin.— Puttkammer&Muhlbrecht; Mayer 

Co. ; or G. P. Putnam's Sons. & MuUer. 

Paris. — A. Hermann, 8 rue de la Sorbonne; Leipzig. — F. A. Brockhaus. 

Em. Terqueni,31bi» Boulevard Haussmann, Frankfort. — Joseph Baer & Co. 

Strassburg. — Karl J. Triibner. Turin, Florence, and Rome. — E. Loescher. 



JOHNS HOPKINS ONIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor* 



History is past Politics and Politics present JUstorj — Freeman. 



EIGHTH SERIES 
I-II 

THE BEGINNINGS 

OP 

AMERICAN NATIONALITY 



The Constitutional Relations Between the Continental 

Congress and the Colonies and States 

from 1774 to 1789 



By ALBION W. SMALL, Ph. D. 

President of Colby University 



BALTIMORE 

PUBUCATION AGKNCT OP THE JOHNS HOPKIMS UNIVBRSITT 
PUBLISHED MONTHLY 

January aud February, 1890 



PRICE ONE DOLLAR 



JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science. 

Herbert B. Adams, Editor. 

Neither the University nor the Editor assumes responsibility for the views of contributors. 

FIRST SERIES.— Local Institutions.— 1883. 

I. An Introduction to American Institutional History. By Ebward 

A. Freeman. 25 cents. 

II. The Germanic Origin of New England Towns. By H. B, Adams. 

50 cents. 

III. Local Government in Illinois. By Albert Shaw. — Local Govern- 

ment in Pennsylvania. By E. R. L. Gould. 30 cents. 

IV. Saxon Tithingmen in America. By H. B. Adams. 50 cents. 

V. Local Government in Michigan, and the Northwest. By E. W. Bemis. 

25 ce7t,ts. 

VI. Parish Institutions of Maryland. By Edward Ingle. 40 cerite, 

VII. Old Maryland Manors. By John Helmsley Johnson. SO cents. 

VIII. Norman Constables in America. ByH. B.Adams. 50 cente. 
IX-X. Village Communities of Cape Ann and Salem. By H. B. Adams. 

50 cents. 

XI. The Genesis of a New England State (Connecticut). By Alexan- 

der Johnston. 30 cents. 

XII. Local Government and Free Schools in South Carolina. By B. J. 
Ramage. 40 cents. 

SECOND SERIES.— Institutions and Economics.— 1884. 

I-II. Methods of Historical Study. By H. B. Adams. 50 cents. 

III. The Past and the Present of Political Economy. By R. T. Ely. 

35 cents. 

IV. Samuel Adams, The Man of the Town Meeting. By James K. Hos- 

MER. 35 cents. 
V-VI. Taxation in the United States. By Henry Carter Adams. 50 cents. 
VII. Institutional Beginnings in a Western State. By Jesse Macy. 

25 cents. 
VIII-IX. Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization. By 

William B. Weed en. 50 cents. 

X. Town and County Government in the English Colonies of North 

America. By Edward Channing. 50 cents. 

XI. Rudimentary Society among Boys. By J. Helmsley Johnson. 50 cents. 

XII. Land Laws of Mining Districts. ByC. H, Shinn. 50 cents. 

THIRD SERIES.— Maryland, Virginia and 
Washington.— 1 885. 

I. Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States. 
George Washington's Interest in Western Lands, the Potomac Company, 
and a National University. By H. B. Adams. 75 cents. 

II-III. Virginia Local Institutions : — The Land System; Hundred; 
Parish; County; Town. By E. Ingle. 75 cents. 

IV. Recent American Socialism. By Richard T. Ely. 50 cents. 

V-VI-VII. Maryland Local Institutions :— The Land System; Hun- 
dred; County; Town. By Lewis W.Wilhelm. $1.00. 

{Continued on third page of cover.) 



VIII. The Influence of the Proprietors in Founding the State of New 
Jersey. By Austin Scott. 25 cents. 

IX-X. American Constitutions; The Relations of the Three Depart- 
ments as Adjusted by a Century. By Horace Davis. 50 cenls. 

XI-XII. The City of Washington. By J. A. Porter. 50 cents. 

FOURTH SERIES.— Municipal Government and 
Land Tenure.— 1886. 

I. Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River. By Irving Elting. 

50 cents. 
II-III. Town Government in Rhode Island. By W. E. Foster.— The 

Narragansett Planters. By Edward Channing. 50 cents. 

IV. Pennsylvania Boroughs. By William P. Holcomb. 50 cents. 

V. Introduction to the Constitutional and Political History of the indi- 

vidual States. By J. F. Jameson. 50 cents. 

VI. The Puritan Colony at Annapolis, Maryland. By Daniel E. Ran- 

dall. 50 ce7iis. 

VII-VIII-IX. History of the Land Question in the United States. By 
SHOstJKE Sato. $1.00. 

X. The Town and City Government of New Haven. By Charles H. 
Leverinioue. 50 cents. 

XI-XII. The Land System of the New England Colonies. By Mel- 
ville Egleston. 50 cents. 

FIFTH SERIES.— Municipal Government, 
History and Politics.— 1887. 

I-II. City Government of Philadelphia. By Edward P. Allinson and 
Boies Penrose. 50 cents. 

III. City Government of Boston. By James M. Bugbee. 25 cents. 

IV. City Government of St. Louis. By Marshall S. Snow. 25 cents. 
V-VI. Local Government in Canada. By John George Bourinot. 50 cents. 

VII. The Influence of the War of 1812 upon the Consolidation of the 
American Union. By Nicholas Murray Butler. 25 cents. 

VIII. Notes on the Literature of Charities. By Herbert B.Adams. 25cents. 

IX. The Predictions of Hamilton and De Tocquevilie. By James 
Bryce. 25 cents. 

X. The Study of History in England and Scotland. By Paul Fredericq. 

25 cents. 

XI. Seminary Libraries and University Extension. By H. B. Adams. 

25 cents. 

XII. European Schools of History and Politics. By Andrew D. White. 
25 cents. 

SIXTH SERIES.— The History of Co-operation in 
the United States.— 1888. 

SEVENTH SERIES.— Social Science, Education, and 
Government. — 1889. 

L Arnold Toynbee. By F. C. Montague. With an Account of the Work of 
Toynbee Hall in East London, by Philip Lyttelton Gell. 50 cenU. 

II-III. The Establishment of Municipal Government in San Francisco. 

By Bernard Moses. 50 cents. 
IV. The City Government of New Orleans. By William W. Howe. 

25 cents. 
V-VI. English Culture in Virginia: A Study of the Gilmer Letters, 

etc. By William P. Trent. $1.00. 



VII-VIII-IX. The River Towns of Connecticut. Wethersfield, Hartford 
and Windsor. By Charles M. Andrews. $1.00. 

X-XI-XII. Federal Government in Canada. By John G. Bourinot, 

$1.00. 

EIGHTH SERIES —History, Politics, and Education — 
1890. — Subscription, $3.00. 

I-II. The Beginnings of American Nationality. The Constitutional Rela- 
tions between the Continental Congress and the Colonies and States. By 
Albion W. Small, Ph. D. (J. H. U.), President of Colby University. 
$1.00. 

Local Government in Wisconsin. By David E. Spencer, A. B. (Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin). In press. 

Development of Municipal Unity in the Lombard Communes. By 

William Klapp Williams, Ph. D. 
The Study of History in France, Germany, Belgium and Holland, By 

Profesor Paul Fredericq, of the University of Ghent. Translated by 

Henrietta Leonard, A. B. (Smith College). 
Spanish Colonization in the Southwest. By Frank W. Blackmar, 

Ph. D., Professor of History and Sociology in the University of Kansas, 
Seminary Notes on Recent Historical Literature. By H. B. Adams, 

J. M. Vincent, W. B. Scaife, Ph. D. (Vienna) and others. 
Higher Education of the People. A Series of Social and Educational 

Studies, By Herbert B, Adams. 

Notes on the Government and Administration of the United States. 

By W, W, WiLLOUGHBY and W. F. Willoughby. 
Other papers will be announced from time to time, 

ANNUAL SERIES, 1883-1889. 

series 1,— LOCAL INSTITUTIONS. 479pp. $4.00. 
SERIES II.— INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMICS, 629 pp. 84.00. 
SERIES III.— MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, AND WASHINGTON. 595 pp. $4.00, 
SERIES IV. -MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND LAND TENURE. 600pp. $3.50, 
SERIES V,— MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT, HISTORY AND POLITICS, 559 pp 
$3.50. ^ 

SERIES VI,— THE HISTORY OF CO-OPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 

540 pp. «3..50. 

SERIES VII,— SOCIAL SCIENCE, MUNICIPAL AND FEDERAL GOVERN- 
MENT. 628 pp. $3.50. 

The set of seven volumes is now offered for $21.00 ; with five extra volumes, "New Haven," 
"Baltimore" ''Philadelphia''' "Local Constitutional History," Vol. I, and "Negro in Maryland^' 
altogether twelve volumes, $30.00 ; with, the current eighth series, $32.00, 



All business communications should be addressed to the Publication 
Agency of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Sub- 
scriptions will also be received, or single copies furnished by any of the following 

AMERICAN agents: 

New York,— G. P. Putnam's Sons, 27 W. 23d Baltimore.— John Murphy & Co.; Cushings 

St. ct Bailey. 

New Haven. — E. P. Judd. Cincinnati. — Robert Clarke & Co. 

Boston. — Damrell & Upham; W. B. Clarke Indianapolis.— Bowen-.Merrill Co, 

A Co. Chicago.— A. C. McChirg & Co. 

Providence. — Tibbitts & Preston. Louisville. — Flexner & Staadeker. 

Philadelphia. — Porter & Coates; J. B. Lip- San Francisco.— Bancroft Company. 

pincoit Co, New Orleans.— George F. Wharton. 

Washington, — W, H, Lowdermilk & Co.; Richmond. — Randolph & English. 

Brentano's. Toronto.— Carswell & Co. 

Montreal, — William Foster Brown & Co. 

EUROPEAN AGENTS: 

London,— Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Berlin.— Puttkammer&Muhlbrecht; Mayer 

Co.; or G. P. Putnam's Sons. & Miiller. 

Paris. — A. Hermann, 8 rue de la Sorbonne; Leipzig. — F. A. Brockhaus. 

Em. Terquem,31i>'» Boulevard Haussraann. Frankfort.— Joseph Baer & Co. 

Strassburg,— Karl J, Trubner, Turin, Florence, and Rome.— E. Loescher. 



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